Don’t think many will argue my saying 2020 is a year that echoes the adage: to be surviving is a measurement of success!!! Be it the pandemic’s up rise, economic downfalls, social isolations, crowded protest escalations, churches closed, emotional wounds opened, smothered by quarantined family members, separated from hospitalized loved ones, well fed on conflicting opinions, starved for accurate certainty, etc., etc., etc. – the dilemma needing answering is how do we find the ability to survive??? Upon deeper thought, maybe the real question is not how do we survive; but where do we find the ability to thrive.
In this time of overwhelming distraught, over and over, I hear Christ teach: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 (NIV) Without a question, the answer is: to survive the world’s curses we need to thrive on God’s promises.
Took many, many decades of wasted, stubborn focus on what gloom I somehow needed to survive, before I understood darkness always ends when the “SON” rises. My challenge then became not to kill the darkness but, rather, to re-birth my life in the “SON” rising. Night after night, when worried sleeplessness engulfed me, I used to toss and turn and, come dawn, not an ounce of strength was left to carry me through the day. Once I discovered, though my body shouted “worried and can’t sleep”, my soul was softly chanting, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”, then mine was God’s strength not to survive but to thrive, even in the worst of times.
Next time you toss and turn and worry in fury, I challenge you. Turn your mind straying in fear to your soul praying in zeal. Talk to God. Just let all your fears cry out. Ask God to fill you with His peace, will and way. Take rest in thanking and praising God for understanding, loving, forgiving and carrying you and yours. Allow the soothing mantra, “I need you, Father; please, lead me, Father”, bring rest to your weary, strife burdened life. Never forget, if God fills you, Satan cannot empty you. Or, in this Grammy’s proverb words: to survive, you have to thrive…
Uplifted in a Broken Down World 