Finding Easter Peace During a Pandemic
I looked at the date this morning while cueing up online church, and remembered my son’s birthday party would have been today. A small party with just family and a train cake, to celebrate our favorite smiley toddler. Cancelled. Sigh.
March is finally over; what a crazy month. "An unprecedented time”, I keep hearing, and yeah, it is. In a bunch of ways. There’s a Good News account on Instagram, posting all the silver linings of people coming together or doing fun/funny things during quarantine, but when I look at the news, the real news (whatever that is) it’s a lot of things, but not good.
Last month was gloomy and a little frightening. There’s a new, infectious disease. A looming healthcare crisis. In a place like America, known for freedom and people’s rights, the government has taken away freedom to assemble and many’s ability to work. As a Christian I’m called to love ALL my neighbors: those who are ill, immunocompromised, in health care, elderly, but also the healthy ones: those experiencing stress, abuse, financial and mental hardship, challenges of children suddenly at home, hunger, fear and crushing loneliness. As a Christian I am also called to obey those in authority over me.
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Romans 13:1-2.
I worry about New Yorkers, the economy, how we’ll buy a house in this mess, vaccines, getting sick/infecting others, children at home with abusers, my own ’shuttered’ photography business, pregnant women, tired health care workers with impossible decisions, and creative friends whose businesses have collapsed. It’s a lot to take in the midst of a cold, grey spring.
Frankly, I’m not in the best place.
The time I spend on social media easily tops my time in the word, giving the Devil ample time to prey on my mind. I find it harder to sleep at night, in spite of the fact that my family is touched by this less than most. My husband is able to work, we are healthy and fed, my sweet, oblivious children have dance parties in the living room and make mud pies in the yard. Oh the tangled web the prince of darkness weaves.
Where is my strength rooted? My hope, my happiness?
Evil comes in all kinds of packages, my friends. I strive to be aware of the everyday insidious ways it seeks to wedge me from focus on God and His will: discontentment, distraction, confusion, boredom, pity, worry, selfishness. Big time, that one, selfishness. Entitlement. Laziness— I even whined about the timing of this opportunity to write for you. There is a heaviness, an evil feeling to this season for me. It seems bad to do things that are normally good: bringing a meal to a friend, doing photography, offering help to an overwhelmed mama, going on dates with my hubs, spending time with cousins/grandparents, singing with brothers and sisters during Lent and Easter. Those things I hold dear, and have been taken away. Oh, poor me. Pity. Selfishness, again.
Christ suffered THE CROSS for us, why won't I suffer this for Him?
After another rough night of sleep Saturday, I woke feeling frazzled, surprised at how much this is getting to me. Isn’t happiness in Jesus supposed to be bigger than this?! I felt angry and helpless, uninformed and under-valued. I was short with my family and definitely not in the mood to sit through church on a screen with wiggly kids. So I didn’t. None of us did. Well played, Satan.
Yet I KNOW these things to be true, regardless of how I am feeling: He is all the things I am seeking.
He is patient, unchangeable, joy, peace, forgiveness, worth. Truth does not depend on feelings, just as God does not exist because we do or don’t believe in Him—HE IS. He is using this stain of illness, of sin and confusion to serve His purposes. This dark time too is subject to His will, and He is working all things for my good. It doesn’t feel like it today, I’ll be honest, but it’s true.
How timely really, to have to simplify during Lent. To be cold and sad and lonely, all things Jesus felt. To know for the maybe the first time in my pretty privileged life, a touch of scarcity, an lesson on what seems unfair, undeserved. To really grieve the brokenness of a world whose dying and leaders don’t know Him. Picture Jesus’ grief as He looked over Jerusalem, blind to the healing He brings: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” Matthew 23:37. They crucified Him for idols of this world and so do we.
Pray that the noise of a worried world be silenced. Those things the world deems important be put back in their place, that I might hold up Jesus and His cross as a light for the days ahead. For all my days. A light to lift the clouds of fear with facts— Jesus loves me, this I know.
We're going to be sad some days. Some weeks, months, and that’s OK. Sin is sad, so is death. This is not an easy situation to handle. Happiness is not a right, in fact God says the opposite:
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
But peace, ahh, well, that one is golden. A hard fought, untouchable, prize Christ won for everyone: I am His and He is mine. Such peace! Let it fill you! Let His love be the glue when things seem to be falling apart.
He is the perfect version of the things we're fighting for: life and freedom.
In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
(In Christ Alone by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend)
P.S. I was really blessed in the process of writing this post. I'm still a little sad. I will be for awhile, but the calm I found in the reminder of a sure hope, was so welcome. Like a long hug after a good cry. Couldn’t you use a good hug right now? :) I feel better for the chance to refocus, and I pray you do too. Thanks for being my sweet sisters, the invisible church He used to lift my face to the light of Christ. Yep, Easter will look a little different this year. I have a frozen package of deli ham heading for scrambled eggs and plans for some sort of comfort-food lemony dessert. We’ll watch the service and try not to cry (me) for the music and the lilies and the “He is risen” greetings from church friends, but the Good News will be just as good! Better, maybe even.
I know that my Redeemer lives;
What comfort this sweet sentence gives.
He lives, he lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my ever-living Head!
He lives, all glory to his name!
He lives, my Jesus, still the same.
Oh, the sweet joy this sentence gives:
"I know that my Redeemer lives!"
CW 152: I Know My Redeemer Lives
