Circle of Trust

I saw the following message last week and it resonated with me and so I wanted to share it with the people who are most important to me…. Yes, Appletini, I’m talking about you too….

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think. Then you will learn from your own experience how his ways will really satisfy you.”

Romans 12: 2 (TLB)

It appears that a reopening of our nation is beginning.
Slowly seems to be the word of the day from our leaders.
The isolation and shut down of our lives may be ending.
But is there anything different about us? Will we be bringing the same person into the reopening?
Will we be heading back toward the way things were? And the way we were?
Or will things be different? What will our priorities look like?
I wonder if we have learned anything during our journey through this unusual season.
And before this reopening moves too far along toward the way things were—shouldn’t we decide if we want to go back to the way things were?
Is there anything we have learned from all we have been through together?
Has anything changed within us?
Has anything which has occurred during the past few months reawakened anything in us which God would suggest is important, and which the world had long since covered over?
I wonder if anything should change within us before we commit to be a part of this reopening of our lives. Maybe we should just wait.
Because I suspect there are things within you which should change, and I know there are things within me which should.
Not business as usual, again, but something different.
Something more basic. More important. More aligned with God and His will for our lives.
During the past few months we have been forced to, or forced back to, basics—faith, family, safety, health, water, food, and, of all things, toilet paper.
And we have had a lot of time wondering aloud with God—what is going on, and what’s next.
I wonder what is important to each of us now, that wasn’t before the coronavirus closed our doors and took the lives of our loved ones. Maybe we should embrace those things we see now as important, as we move ahead.
So what will our personal reopening look like?
Business as usual, conformed again to what the world says is important.
Or something different. Maybe some things which God is shining a light upon.
Try this—what would God want us to look like, and be like, in the days ahead, as we go through, and then come out on the others side of this moment of reopening?
What has God been trying to tell us is truly important, and always been trying to tell us, but especially in this time of shutdown, uncertainty and isolation?
What would He change about us?
Reopening…?  Great!
But who will we be? What will our priorities be?
Just a thought or two, for the next few days or so.

As I said at the beginning, this message resonated with me because, while SIP has been difficult, it has also been AWESOME!!  I have had a lot of quality time with my family, time that we would not have had together without the pandemic.  Was this God’s way of tell us to WAKE UP!!  Take your eyes off the screens for a little while and connect with your FAMILY!!  I for one, do not want everything to go back to “normal”… Yes, I want a cure for the virus, I want the country and our economy to start working again, I want people who lost jobs to get them back…. But I don’t want to sacrifice family time and family dinners and weekend game nights…  Do you?

We prayed for two family’s that lost loved ones over the weekend… The Martins and the Snyders.  We asked God to bring all those who have lost their lives into His loving embrace in Heaven to be with him forever.