What a remarkable time it has been … a year since my last post, and the world has been going through the COVID-19 pandemic through those months. More than anything else, I have been struck by how blithely we people can go about our business, relatively free from care, and then sovereign God hauls us up short. We believe that we have a right to this or that, and our Creator corrects us; in reality, we can take very few things for granted.
Over the past few months, I have often thought back to people who lived through World War I or World War II. (Having read about those events more than I have read about any pandemic, I find I relate to them more readily.) Most people alive in the 1900s surely did not want those wars to happen, and yet they did, changing the world whether anyone liked it or not. And despite the darkness of the times, and the horror of the things that happened, people survived.
Ultimately, death comes to us all, and we cannot afford to shy away from that reality. It is easy to forget this while we are young, in good health, with a secure job, and so on. The Bible teaches us, in a solemn but not unkind way, “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will [lament] …” (Ecclesiastes 12:1).
Why? From a very practical perspective, I think it is because it is easier to change direction when we are younger, compared to when we are older. And while, theologically speaking, a conservative Christian would recognise that changing someone’s direction is up to God, there is a kind of mystery at play here, too, where He gives us a role in making decisions for ourselves.
Whatever your circumstances as you read this, whether now (in April 2021) or in the future, I hope you will take hope that today is not all there is. May God, in His providence, enable us to see (either for the first time, or with renewed clarity) the hope He extends to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose resurrection we remember today.