I love to travel. My appetite for it is insatiable. I married a kindred spirit. But, as I typically have an every-Sunday gig (as does the preacher’s husband) weekends are not usually our own. This makes spontaneous and even planned getaways, tricky, so we never travel as liberally as we’d like. Over here at the church parsonage, we feed our wanderlust reading travel blogs and chatting with eclectic friends in worldwide expat groups. It scratches our itch for adventure. There’s a great big world out there, people. And except for global pandemics, it’s ripe for exploring. This Sunday rhythm is a 30-year tradition with me. And while I’ve settled into it, I always have a suitcase within reach. Or two.
Pass me the map, will you?
Changing tides have meant I record a sermon on Thursday for a virtual Facebook Premier on Sunday rather than showing up on that same day to preach it twice.
And that also means I have freed up Fridays and Saturdays too.
What?
It’s a strange new world for me, a glorious reset, I might add.
Zooming with staff this week yielded their encouragement that I adopt this new grace-filled rhythm. When Governor Kate and Bishop Elaine raise restrictions and things return to ‘normal,’ that is.
Which brings raises some questions for me:
What does normal look like? Or feel like?
And do we really mean that when we say ‘back to normal.’
Is that what we really want?
This crisis has surely exposed even greater social inequities, the gravity of unpreparedness, and our unbecoming hubris that something/anything could bring us/the world to its knees— never mind something so enigmatic.
Is that ok? What we want?
At the same time, I rejoice in an unrivaled beauty this crisis has exposed.
That of countless, unnamed health care and other essential workers who have made Good Friday-like sacrifices for all including those of us fortunate enough to work from home on our computers and Zoom platforms.
See the mask indentions on their beautiful faces? (if they were fortunate enough to procure one!) Those visages spell love. Every deep line and dark circle.
Oh let me carry even half of that that empathy and courageous spirit
into what I suppose will be ‘the new normal’ and it will be enough!
When Moses finally freed the Israelites from Pharaoh’s insidious grip.
the whole world was before them. Literally.
Not that they were planning a trip. There were no suitcases in sight.
When check-in time arrived, they were unprepared. Woefully.
Grab what you can, but forget the leaven.
No time for bread magic.
If they’d known the trip would take 40 years, they might have made better arrangements.
They might have rehearsed what this ‘new normal’ would look like.
For both themselves and their progeny
We should never waste a good crisis.
I mean nothing disparagingly or insensitive by these words, friends.
What I’m suggesting is that before us all NOW is a perfect opportunity
to do a RESET on life. To rethink who we are and what we value most.
To envision what a new normal should look like through Kingdom eyes.
Join me over the next few weeks in worship as we journey through unfamiliar territory with the liberated Israelites. Sometimes it will be good. And sometimes we will just want to turn around and go straight back to Egypt, Pharaoh or not!
We’ll make ample comparisons between the “never land” they were in then
and the one in which we find ourselves now! Can we all just do a RESET?
