Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Earlier this evening, but after bedtime for a lot of folks, I received the email from Bishop Taylor (who leads the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church) that regular Sunday services are now suspended until further notice. I was still awake taking care of our disabled daughter.
When I texted our church secretary, she said something like, “We’ve been expecting that.” Not her exact words, but close.
The good folks of the churches I pastor have been through difficult times before. Nothing like this, and yet, in a way, challenges are challenges. You react in one of two ways. You focus on you and yours and take care of yourself to the exclusion of most everybody else, grabbing up every roll of toilet paper you can grab. Or you look to see what needs doing and you take care of people.
Here’s another way to put it: you panic because you’ve lost control, or you remember that you never had it in the first place. It helps if you know the one who has ultimate control.
Be sensible, of course. Don’t take chances. Buy toilet paper when you can find it. But when I call church members to check on them, most of them pretty clearly know whose they are, and take security in that.
If you don’t know much Scripture at all, you probably know Psalm 23. Perhaps reading it in a less-familiar translation will give it fresh meaning in this time. Here it is from The Message.
God, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
makes me feel secure.You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.
Peace.