Our theme for this month: “Change can be good for you”
Our Bible verse for today: “Look, I am about to do something new, even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “In what way will your life be different?”
During the recent COVID 19 pandemic there is a political party that has done something which I believe is shameful. As government leaders were scrambling to mitigate the disastrous impact of having to shut down the economy, one of the parties took advantage of it for partisan political purposes. To legislation intended to bring relief to businesses and individuals, they attempted (and succeeded) to attach all sorts of additional spending for things that had nothing to do with the crisis. They did it to advance the most liberal aspects of their political agenda. When asked about it on national television multiple spokespersons for that party smugly responded, “Never waste a good crisis. This is a great opportunity for us to advance our agenda and we would be foolish to waste it.”
While I’m repulsed and angered by the way those politicians shamefully took advantage of a national disaster to advance their partisan agenda, I do agree with the basic premise of “Don’t waste a good crisis”. Within every crisis there are moments of great opportunity for change. A crisis often causes disruption to the normal way of doing things, and that then causes us to pause and reevaluate how we have been doing things up to that point. A crisis will often require us to make temporary adjustments in our lives that we then discover to have been good, and which we decide to continue after the crisis is over.
I believe we have such an opportunity before us as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic. As a nation and as individuals we have all had to make major adjustments in order to deal with this crisis. Many of those changes have been inconvenient and some of them have been bad. But not all them. Some of the changes have been good for us, and it would be in our own best interest to carry the new habits forward into a new season of life, both as individuals and as nation.
Have there been some good things that have come out of this crisis for you so far? Has it caused you to consider some ways in which you might change your life for the better? Without question, this pandemic and economic meltdown are bad, and they are causing tremendous suffering and long-term damage. But just as in any crisis, there can also be some good things that come out of it. We will spend the coming month thinking about the ways in which this crisis can result in good changes for all of us.
Oak Hill Baptist Church