VISION
RESET-OUR NEOLOGISM FOR THIS SEASON
By Vivian Charles Rix “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
RESET IS NEOLOGISM FOR THIS SEASON. Neologism is a compound word, neo (new) and logism(word). The word Reset encapsulates the idea of the birthing of something new. “Behold a new thing will I do” the prophetic voice of Isaiah, sounding the sophar, echoing the reverberation of the new season. Gramsci speaks of this RESET as an INTERREGNUM: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (Antonio GRAMSCI) Almost like a thief in the night the Covid2019 pandemic landed in our midst and reordering our lives in an unheard-of way. Panic, anxiety, and fear grips the heart and minds almost in an apocalyptic way. The big question that pervades on a global scale, what is the meaning of this? People are trying to make sense of this pandemic. The conspiracy theories had a field day as people tried to make sense of it. The sovereignty God and His infinite ways were often missed in the pandemonium.
ADVANCEMENT OF THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL There is a passage of scripture I’ve pondered on for a while. Jonah in the belly of the fish: a complete lockdown for three days and three nights. In quarantine, as painful as it was, God reset Jonah to recalibrate him and re-initiate a move almost unimaginable, so that when he was delivered a whole city was saved. The lesser for the greater. Hallelujah! Here in the experience of Paul, prison served him as a reset to something greater and beyond imagination. Philippians 1:12 - “But I want you to know, brethren that the things which happened to me, have actually turned out for the furtherance/advancement of the gospel.” The imprisonment came to serve the greater purpose of God, the advancement of the Glorious Gospel. 56
RENAISSANCE The Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed an astonishing 200 million lives in just four years. The Black Death, Bubonic Plague marked an end of an era in Italy, its impact was profound, and it resulted in wide-ranging social, economic, cultural and religious changes. These changes, directly and indirectly, led to the emergence of the Renaissance, one of the greatest epochs for art, architecture, and literature in human history.
RESET, A PROPHETIC IMPERATIVE. We have become so desensitized to the normal and initial state of things, that wrong has become right, evil has become good and lies are accepted as truth. With mental conditioning and the normalcy of evil, the moral and ethical values have degenerated in the compass of many. True North as a compass has been replaced by post-modernism’s relativity. Never has the need of a RESET become an urgent imperative as we navigate and negotiate the march to the precipice of declension, deterioration, and damnation. Sometimes the thing that came to afflict us God uses to RESET us. Remember Paul’s thorn in the flesh? We do not stay around too long, because we want it to be over in a jiffy. We miss the purpose of the thing and do not understand its end and it becomes a lesson wasted. We bind, declare, and pray away what we do not UNDERSTAND. Naomi, after her ten years in Moab understood the death of her husband and sons. God was about TO RESET her trajectory. Bethlehem was her reset from the pangs of Moab. We do not ask for understanding of the thing. Our discomfort informs our reactions and responses The sons of Issachar SOUGHT UNDERSTANDING first, then only they knew what to do. Maybe this whole thing is a little bit of a world reset. Resetting our priorities! Resetting our families. Resetting our society. Resetting our focus. Resetting our faith. Resetting our distorted view of God. Certainly not a bad thing on all accounts!
