7 minute read
A time to learn
A time
to learn
One year on from the start of the pandemic in Ireland, David Cupples reflects back over the seasons of Covid-19.
“All things are yours.” So writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:21. “Whether…the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours.” ‘All things’ means the past year of Covid-19 is ours. What on earth might that mean? How might knowing God make the strange experience of the last year mine, personally and spiritually, in the sense Paul means?
First it means receiving everything as a gift from God. Ultimately everything that comes to us comes from his Fatherly hand. Since God is for us, all is given for our good.
How then should we work with God’s gracious purpose? “Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the Word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4).
It is both universally human and specifically godly to try to make sense of our experience. Here is a personal, prayerful attempt to sanctify, with the Word of God and prayer, this last year; to discern how we might have met God in its bizarre mix of the pleasant and painful, the liberating and the limiting, the worrying and the wonderful, the sadly missed routines and the surprising new opportunities.
The secular, atheistic mindset sees all experience as nothing but one huge formless mishmash of sensations on which we impose our ‘social constructs’ or individual meaning; it also wants to iron out all differences and distinctions since the world has no objective order. The biblical worldview, in contrast, sees life within a divine order, a framework; and one hallmark of this is a recognition of distinctions, differences and opposites. The creation story is about God creating distinctions within a unified order. One of these distinctions is the seasons of the year. My journey with the Lord through the pandemic has paralleled these seasons. In Ecclesiastes 3 the writer reflects on how there is a “season for every activity under heaven.” I don’t think he is being prescriptive – saying there is a right time to do these things, but rather descriptive – these are the diverse experiences of life through which God brings us in this world. Ecclesiastes says it isn’t possible to understand the pattern and purpose of everything that happens.
That is still true and it’s a realistic place to start. The soul finding rest in God alone gives up the vain struggle to understand everything that happens. We are content to look for light, to live wisely and well. I have, however, sensed four seasons on the journey.
Spring is the season of new life and renewal of the earth. The first lockdown last spring had that element of novelty. All church meetings stopped, but wow – new skills learned through running services and meetings online. Evenings in with my wife. New efforts to keep church connected through phone calls, newsy magazines, social media. The sudden shock of church stopping created a fresh awareness of just what we were doing and why. I felt new life and also a sense of hope and anticipation. There were the worries – concern for the sick, for the NHS staff, for jobs and businesses – but we thought it would soon be over. It was the Ecclesiastes “time to plant and a time to uproot.” A time to learn.
Along came summer and life slowed down even further. There were holidays, but much shorter ones. A time to rest – an integral element in God’s creation order. This element of unburdening continued apace as the entire population took clutter to the dump or the charity shop, painted the fence and generally put external affairs in order. God gave us slower times – a chance to let him, “Take from our souls the strain and stress/ And let our ordered lives confess/ The beauty of Thy peace.” One of the great tests of our soul is what we are drawn to when external demands and pressures are stripped away. In this gift of leisurely time, have you been drawn to God’s Word and prayer as a delight? In fulfilling our calling to enjoy God forever, was Covid-19 summer a God-given opportunity to enter a season of leisurely enjoyment of God, his rest, his gifts?
Our church services started in September and like many we thought we were on the road to normality. But autumn quickly became a season of hope deferred. The leaves fell from the trees. Disappointment set in, and as the nights grew dark, a weariness with the new routine. We became ‘Zoomed-out’. The normal relationships we longed for were now being pushed further back out of our reach. Ready to start a new year’s activities we were all revved up but with nowhere to go. Frustration. Autumn was the time when the questions really did emerge – what is God doing here? Words like disappointment, weariness, anxiety about church life or about people’s personal circumstances, about the economic welfare of society, began to kick in. In addition to rising numbers of Covid deaths, we heard of the hidden toll on mental health and domestic relationships.
For many, autumn became the Covid-19 season of anxiety; a call to “cast all your cares upon him for he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). A time of pressing on in the path of duty while coping with disappointment. Autumn of course is the time of harvest, and there was also an aspect of fruitfulness – hearing stories of God at work reaching people who would never dream of entering a church building. Correspondence with a few online listeners. Perhaps seeing the fruit of our reading and praying in our own lives, and of deeper heart conversations with loved ones.
Which leads to winter. With the announcement of the second lockdown in December, the natural hopes for the new year died. Winter descended. For me, winter has become the season of waiting in faith and hope. In John 5:17 Jesus says: “My Father is always at work and I too am working.” Are some aspects of church life dying never to rise again? God is still at work. Does that longed-for day when we can hug each other, shake hands, squeeze into the pews and sing our hearts out seem a long way off? God is ceaselessly at work while we wait. As people grieve, politicians decide, teachers and pupils struggle to cope, health workers become increasingly exhausted, people worry about their jobs, God’s mercies rise with the sun and are new every morning. Just today I got an email from a lady far away who stumbled upon our online services and in her words has been “captivated by the Word”. God at work in the winter.
I have tried to redeem the time. Some days have felt productive and others less-disciplined and aimless. But I have met God in these seasons of learning, of resting and enjoyment, of working steadily when hopes have risen and faded, of trusting him now as we wait for this season to pass.
One secular writer said if he believed in God, he would see this like one of plagues of Egypt, sent to remind us who is boss and that we are not in control. How true that we are not in control. How wonderful that God is fully in control. We can no more build the church, sort out the world, nor perfect our own lives now than we could in normal times. Is the deep paradox possible that God is taking us away from a normality that was actually spiritually abnormal in its hyperactivity and self-confidence, leading us through these strange times
to a proper ‘normal’ of real faith in him; trusting him to do what only he can do? Does he want post-Covid normality to be an Ecclesiastes 3 season of “a time to tear down and a time to build…a time to keep and a time to throw away”? There is time, a gift from God. There are seasons, the shape and structure of life’s journey. There is a purpose being worked out by our God with whom a thousand years is but a day and who sees the end from the beginning.
“Lead us Heavenly Father lead us
O’er the world’s tempestuous sea
Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us
For we have no help but Thee
Yet possessing every blessing
If our God our Father be.”
Rev David Cupples is minister of Enniskillen Presbyterian Church.
