Yesterday at church, I addressed the fact that 2020 has been a hard year. It’s been especially hard for those in eastern Iowa who dealt with a “once in a life-time” (we hope) derecho.
It was tough enough with COVID, yet many parts of our country dealt with wildfires, some dealt with hurricanes, while some dealt with oppressive heat.
COVID has kept us from gathering with our friends and loved ones. These times were times of encouragement, and great comfort for many. Now we had to search out new ways to maintain relationships.
Because of COVID mitigations, the economy took a real hit just when things seemed to be making a full recovery plus.
Because of COVID many spent weeks in quarantine. Some spent days, and weeks on ventilators. We all lost friends and loved ones along the way, many from COVID but some from other disease. COVID didn’t make cancer go away or heart disease or automobile wrecks. It’s been a tough year. (I forgot to mention the hailstorm back in April. It destroyed our roof, along with hundreds of other roofs in our community. Now we had to deal with our insurance company, great people, and a contractor.)
In our time together at Troy Mills Christian Church yesterday, we took a quick look at some folks in the Bible who had bad years. Noah, Esther, Job, Nebuchadnezzar and even Mary the mother of Jesus.
The remarkable thing about their bad years is that they all ended well. Losses that had been suffered were returned, some even doubled. They things exemplified the classic proverb of Solomon, found in Ecclesiastes 7:8, “The end of a thing is better than it’s beginning.”
There’s another passage we didn’t get to examine, due to time. Habakkuk 1:5 is an interesting verse. The prophet was whining to God about the evil he was surrounded by. It was much like our time. He asked God if He had noticed the evil. God acknowledged it and promised that He was in the process of working to bring about good. But before the good came, there were going to be some unusual things happen.
The promise from God was that He was going to work in a way that would “utterly astound Habakkuk.” But He challenged the prophet to pay attention. Note God told the prophet to, “look and watch.” I think too often we get so discouraged and caught up in the difficult times we forget to look for the ways God is at work. Perhaps the “watch” part of that command was meant for us to watch how we allowed the circumstances affect us.
God is always at work. He never leaves us. He won’t forsake us. He is always with us; always watching; always listening.
Now it’s our job to look for Him; watch how we live and be prepared to be utterly amazed.
Always in Pursuit!
Don
In Pursuit! 