Church newsletter pastoral column for St. Peter Lutheran Church, Greene, Iowa, for September, 2020.
Remembering and Hoping
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who has promised is faithful.”
– Hebrews 10:23
At a conference I just attended (virtually, of course – I miss events when you didn’t have to wait for the speaker to buffer!), one of the speakers talked about how to find hope in a crisis. Times of crisis, like a pandemic, are disruptive. They take what’s normal and shake it up. It’s easy for the disruption to become overwhelming.
In these last six months, we’ve seen the pandemic disrupt many different aspects of our normal lives. Of course, most significantly, millions of people around the world have gotten sick, with nearly a million losing their lives to the virus. But even for the vast majority of us who have not been infected, there’s been a great deal of disruption. Everything from toilet paper supply chains to school plans to nursing home visits to vacation plans has shifted this year. And obviously, the disruption includes the way we do ministry and worship as a congregation as well.
One of the most challenging parts of a pandemic as a crisis is that it’s slow-moving. I don’t know about you, but if I pictured a pandemic (not a topic I’d ever spent much time considering!), I imagined something more like a zombie apocalypse, something that would sweep through the country in a matter of a few weeks and it would be terrible and then we’d move on. It turns out that a pandemic is a much more gradual crisis, where plans and adaptations quickly made months ago turn out to still be necessary for the foreseeable future. It’s hard not knowing when things will get back to normal, or what parts of normal will never return.
Faced with the ongoing uncertainty of this slow-moving crisis, how do we make plans for the future? Where do we find hope? Echoing many passages in Scripture, Rozella Haydée White (the speaker I mentioned) encourages us in times of crisis to look forward by remembering.
Remember who we are. We are sinners redeemed by God’s grace shown on the cross, bearers of God’s image, beloved children of God claimed in the waters of baptism. Our primary identity is found in Christ. As a congregation, we are gathered by God into a community for the purpose of loving and serving our neighbors, even in the midst of disruption. We are ambassadors for God’s kingdom.
And remember who God is. God is the Creator of all things, the One who spoke the world into existence. God is Jesus our Redeemer, the One who humbled himself unto death in order to give us life now and forever. God is the Holy Spirit, who accompanies us through life, who animates us, inspires us, gives us faith, and fills our very being.
As we move into a new season, the disruptions will continue. More events will be cancelled. More and more aspects of normal life will feel different. In the midst of that disruption, hold on to the hope of faith. In the turbulence, hold on to the anchor of who God is, and remember who you are. Remember that God is faithful. Pray and talk with God. Read the Bible to discover God’s promises. Hold on to hope. May these strange times, may you come to know God’s love in ever-deeper and new ways.
In Christ,
-Pastor Daniel Flucke