It's May! (and it's not over..)

It's May! If only a rare day in May, weren't so rare. Of course, if it were not so rare, I would probably not appreciate it as much as I do. Today was truly a rare day in May. The temperature was perfect, the sky was clear blue, the birds were chirping happy songs. Winter is over! But...Coronavirus is not.

Particularly now we are ancy. We want to know when Coronavirus will be over. When will the curve, which appears to be flattening in some places, be not only flat, but on the downslope...and not just some places, but.everywhere? When will social distancing be relaxed, and even dismissed? When will the stimulus money reach those in need of stimulus? When will the stock market go up and the unemployment rate go down? When will we be able to gather, collaborate on projects, worship, play games, eat together, without the fear of unintentionally contributing to the spread of the virus?

We are not in control. Of this virus, of decisions being made at higher levels with the best interest of the whole in mind, of how all of this will impact us not only today, but for months to come. I would predict that it will not not be over, until long after we are over it. Will we live it out, or will we circumvent the lessons we could learn, the heartache we could share, the growth that can come when rains pour down? God can use this, the hardest parts of this, for His glory and even our ultimate good, will we allow Him to?

Will we praise Him that He is in control? (As we face the reality that we are not.) Will we remember with joy that He is the author of not only life and death here, but also of a glorious everlasting life for those who find it in His Son? Will we return to our own planning, or live more as if we are planning for Him to return?

Our hope is not to get through this but to know God through this. Grief takes time. So will this. It will be a journey that we all walk, but we will all walk very differently. The important thing is to walk it. To not miss what God is speaking as He walks with you. Because while it sounds good for this to just be over and for life to go back to normal, there is more to life than normal, and certainly more to life than the way things were before COVID-19.

What our hearts long for is not what was, or even what is to come on this earth. In the words of C.S.Lewis, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can Isatisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

Every heartache, every fear, every disappointment, can either point us to despair that this world is not what we hope it to be, or to the hope that indeed there is another world that awaits us. Someday this will be over. On that day those who know Christ Jesus as Lord, will find than it being over, the real it, will have just begun.

In the meantime, it can feel like kind of a mean time. We are tired of social distancing, tired of graphs, predicitons, over-reactions and under-reactions to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, it's still May day. Let's not miss the beauty of a rare day in May.

Harder to do if you have lost someone you love, if the business you spent a lifetime building is crumbling, if you are feeling ill or anxious.

For those of you who are forgetting what it is (in the midst of the pandemic) to relax and enjoy a rare day in May, check out this list -

A-to Z- (A Few Ways to Relax)

And for those of in the midst of pain in this moment- here is a poem of encouragement-

Thinking of You in These Moments So Tough