We have a few weeks to go before we're sprung and can go out to the world again. The President of the United States called a state of national emergency, and we are told by executive order here in Georgia to stay at home. We are not to go out except for necessary trips, and when we do, we are told to stay 6 feet apart from each other and to wear a face mask. This is due to the global pandemic COVID-19, which has struck almost all nations on earth after originating fin and escaping from China. Our school has been cancelled for the rest of the year and non-essential businesses are closed. We may not gather in person for church.
I wonder in ten years as I look back on this essay what I will think or feel. It is all so surreal right now, will seem to be a bad dream to me in the future? Something I look back on from heaven because I've died from the pandemic, natural causes, or have been raptured? Time will tell what God is doing through this, but we know for sure that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose". (Romans 8:28). Try changing "What is happening to me?" to "What is God doing? I can't wait to see!"
Meanwhile, how many photographs can I take of the yard? The forced sheltering in place has sure stretched my creativity on shooting the same scenes over and over! How many books can I read? Should I worry that my reading list has turned grim?Love in the Time of Cholera
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Great Influenza
A Journal of the Plague Year
The Stand
The Bell Jar
Just kidding! Just kidding!! I'm actually reading Contagious Christian Living by Joel Beeke, Man Overboard! Jonah, by Sinclair Ferguson, and the biographical novel The Whisper of the River by Ferrol Sams. What are you reading?
This is a time where if you have been fed a diet of cotton candy, you are discovering about now that you have nothing to stand on. Has what you wrapped yourself with melted away at the first sign of trouble? If you have been fed a diet of meat and as everything is stripped away you see you are standing on the Rock, you are in good shape.
I hope you are doing well, staying healthy and sane in this topsy-turvy world. Here are a few links to peruse for your consideration-
Always keep in mind the bigger picture:
The Promise of Peace in a Troubled World
We can be thankful in the providence of God to be living in a time when that [global deaths via black plague] doesn’t happen. And what we face now would be considered in comparison to that a very minor concern. And yet, because you have an entire world of people cut off from any eternal hope, everything becomes fearful to them. For those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, who have no true hope after death, it’s reasonable to fear, it’s reasonable to be concerned about death and because they face, as we know, divine judgment and eternal punishment.
What elements of the Gospel are important when we share? Here is 9Marks with a short listWhy Can't I stop Worrying?
The toilet paper shortage...We're all at home, that's why!
RedeemTV, A ministry of Christian History Institute and Vision Video, has clean programs for your viewing. Free for now.
Darryl Dash has a point, we need more than tips if we're going to make it through the next weeks. We need meat.
Ruth Clemence says ‘I am not stuck at home, I am safe at home.’ As a stay-at-home mom her routine hasn't changed much, she shares 9 Truths that Quiet My Soul in Quarantine
Since you're at home for these lengths of time and Amazon is delaying delivery of books by weeks and the Library is closed, and you're sick of watching tv program after tv program, you may be noticing about now how important your home library is. The Well Watered Woman shares Building a Home Theological Library.
Do you craft? Kathryn in Do It On a Dime has some tips for crafting from your at-home stash
I am going to craft from my stash later today! I don't know what I'm going to make, but I will make something!
There is one swear in this short video. Wives will immediately understand this video! I hope you laugh. Watch to the end.
