Nothing Will Be the Same
Earlier this week, I went to the church to record this week’s Bible study. When I walk in every Tuesday I notice that the announcements posted in the halls are one more week out-of-date and that makes me sad. Not seeing you makes me sad too, and I wonder when we will all be together again.
I film every week in Carreker so that you might listen and watch with a tiny sense of continuity. To be honest, though, it’s for my sake also that I go there; it feels so normal speaking in that space, under those lights, in front of that stage and that cross.
The only thing missing, of course, is you. I miss your faces so much, and my voice sounds strange and echoey when there’s no one else there. When I’m there I keep a keen ear out for noises; I have by now grown used to hearing the icefall in the ice maker in the kitchen and of course, I occasionally hear muffled sounds from outside. But overall the silence is a little unnerving, and I always relax at the sound of my own voice, even if it does echo a little too much.
Good things have been happening with me during these strange days. It has been lovely to spend time with my family and seeing all three of our kids play together again has been a true gift. We have laughed a lot and shared a number of meals together. But this pandemic feels to me like a kind of death, and I often wonder what lies on the other side of it. What will church life be like? How will the church function? Will a friend or loved one contract the virus? Will anything ever be the same again?
Lately, I have come to believe that, whatever happens, nothing will be the same again. A return to full business will be so slow in coming, and the economic and emotional fallout so widespread, that, even when we do return to normal, it will necessarily be a new normal. And no one knows what that will look like.
That’s a little scary. But there’s one thing to remember, friends: we follow one who knows our frame. Jesus has told us to pick up our crosses and follow him wherever he leads. By mentioning the cross Jesus is throwing us a clear signal that we are called to do hard things and to accept hard news and to not run from every scary thing or to lose ourselves in fantasies about the way we wish things were. He invites us to be open to the very real unknowns of this life, and to suffering also. I believe that in order for our response to Jesus’ call to be true, we must truly allow ourselves to feel loss and insecurity and uncertainty and to walk into it anyway.
It seems like the church of Jesus Christ, among all people on Earth, should be the one with the most hope that something really good lies on the other side of this season, the most faith in the goodness of life, and the most love for the world in these dark and uncertain times.
May we all be that church today and in the weeks and years to come.
Paul Wallace, Pastor for Adult Education, First Baptist Decatur