Your resiliency during a time of COVID-19

I was recently led to re-read these questions that I posed to you in our post of the 23rd of November:

• How would you respond if you were forced from your home? 
• Would you be able to find joy? 
• How would you combat creeping despair? 
• What would be your strategies for resilience?

Rather than being forced from your homes, most of you have confined to your homes. But I think those questions are quite pertinent for all of us in this time!

This article by NT Wright helped me to crystallize some of the lament in our hearts in this time: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/?fbclid=IwAR3zPKoEDoQBYVsPE4uGsOzAKEPmFx9SK_YCqGBv8BUCG9_fnGeFGBVe9Ss

I have these laments (among others):

1. That a people so marginalized already are only marginalized more by COVID-19;
2. That we are separated from our biological extended and nuclear family during this time;
3. That I find it so difficult to see past my own inconveniences caused by COVID-19 to be able to perceive the dire consequences for others;
4. That Christine has not been able to shake illness for the last month or so;
5.  That this illness could be what forces us to leave this place where we feel called to work, and this people with whom we feel called to walk;
6. That the poor are made poorer by such circumstances. 

I have been drawn to the biblical laments for some time (those of you from Emmanuel Mennonite in Minneapolis might remember us bringing our laments to the altar some years back). These writers cry out to God because they know him as He who acts on behalf of His people. So their lament is an act of faith, not an act of despair! In fact, the flip side of the coin bearing the image of lament is an image of faith! The Biblical writers didn't write out of abject despair wondering whether God even exists - they rather wrote out of their relationship with a God who they existentially knew and experienced.

Jesus, in the very travails of death on the cross, quotes from one of these Biblical songs of lament - Psalm 22 - when "...about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" Maybe you feel a bit like the psalmist, who continues on by saying, "Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?"

I am certainly not smart enough to understand what God is doing, or allowing to happen, through COVID-19. NT Wright suggests (to those of us so influenced by the Enlightenment) that we may find no rational answer to to this question. In Stanley Hauerwas' book Naming the Silences, he suggests that the question we would be asking ourselves is whether or not we have a community surrounding us when we suffer, rather than why God allows suffering.

Psalm 46 is a place where I have sought comfort in these nearly unprecedented days:

1 ¶  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

3  though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

4  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

5  God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

6 ¶  The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

7  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

8  Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth.

9  He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

10  "Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."

11  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

So I come back to my questions: 

• Are we able to find joy in these difficult circumstances? 
• Do you have strategies for combating creeping despair? 
• What are your strategies for resilience?

We would love to hear what your strategies for resilience are as you yourself - and all people around our globe - face these cataclysmic changes to our daily existence. What ways are you finding to love your neighbors (next door or around the world) at this time?

My prayer is that the God of all comfort will share His with you - that you, in turn, can share this comfort with others!

(c) Medair / Hailey Sadler