Back to Normal?

“Can’t it just go back to normal?!!”  

Have you asked this question lately?  Have you been grappling with where your patience and endurance ends?  Me, too!  I just want things to be like they used to!  I want to hug everyone, shake your hands, pack 50 people in our fellowship hall for a meal, and only see people in masks on halloween!  

Can’t we just DECLARE it back to normal and act like it is?  

What would it take to go back to normal?  For the virus to go away, or for humans to behave in such a way and be so adapted and healthy that the danger is gone.  Or a reliable medical solution that minimizes risk and severity.  Or all of the above.  That’s when we feel that “ahh, we made it,” feeling.  

Now can you imagine God looking around at His creation after Adam and Eve took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, trying to attain the likeness of God?  The generations of lawlessness and rebellion, sin and depravity?  The Israelites in the wilderness complaining about their temporary discomfort, the people doing what was right according to their own eyes in the time of the judges?  The people clamoring for a king like everyone else, and even David and Solomon’s indiscretions?  Can you picture God watching the kingdom He directed turn to ruin as His people abandoned and ignored Him?  

“Can’t it just go back to normal?!!”  Like it was in Eden when humans walked with God and talked with Him?   It can.  It did.  And the vaccine has been here for two thousand years.  All we have to do is trust our Great Physician and take it.

Jesus is the promised Son of Adam (Son of Man) that crushes the head of the serpent (Gen. 3: 15), the Passover Lamb slain so the spirit of death will pass over us (Ex. 12), he’s the way the truth and the light (John 14: 6), he’s the bread of life (John 6: 35), the living water (Jer. 2: 13, John 7: 37-39), the true vine (John 15: 1), the temple of God (John 2: 21), the atoning and forgiving sacrifice (1 John 2: 2).  He is our way back to Eden, back to the way things are supposed to be.  He’s not just our doctor, he’s our medicine, our personal trainer, or our life coach, he’s our very life.  

And no matter what historic pandemic is covering the globe, no matter what the government says we can or cannot do, and no matter what excuses we come up with for not getting our own self back to Eden, He has made a way.  Will you take it?

Just spending time with Him is enough to give you a taste of how good it is in God’s “normal.”  I prescribe to you just a dose of quiet time, a dose of Scripture, a dose of prayer, and a few old hymns.  Start with a small amount, and as you get better, take more.

​See you at the garden.