In The Crucible

Well, well, well! Here I am writing a blog. I did try this some years ago and I think I managed two posts. But different times require different responses. So, here’s a response from me to our current circumstances. It’s not a thing I’m comfortable with to be honest. That’s nothing against blogs at all, it’s a comment about me. I’m an outdoors sort of a person and I’d much rather be swimming, cycling, waking, playing golf or football than sitting in front of a laptop! But we are in unfamiliar territory as we live in these challenging times. And I can’t do the things I like to do in that way I like to do them. I can walk and cycle to get my daily exercise, but the rest…no can do! As we learnt this morning when we looked at some of Jeremiah chapter 29, we might describe this current time as an exile: a time when everything is different and we are not “at home.” And we also learnt God was as close to, and as interested in his people when they were in exile, as he ever was when they were in Jerusalem. God is with them in the present, whatever the present looks like. That is good news. really good news. It’s really good news for us today, right now in everything we are facing in this current exile. God encourages his people to live well in Babylon. He encourages us to live well today. He also assures his people that he is concerned about their future (Jeremiah 29v11). They are part of His far bigger and far better story. And so are we. That is great news. Really great news! Jeremiah 29 v 13 has a challenge for us that I think might be really relevant to our exile, just as it was to Israel in exile in Babylon: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I wonder, in this time, how much do we seek God? It turns out that this period of exile was a really creative time in the history of Israel. They had to do things differently and they found ways to do that. They had no temple so had to worship together in new ways. That’s not so different from us at this particular time is it? We worshipped together in a different way this morning, and that was different from last week,. I’m wondering if there’s a link between their creativity and their willingness to pray. We can pray. And if we seek God honestly and with all our heart, we can be assured God will hear, for he wants nothing more than for us to pray. So, as this blog comes to an end (perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this point as the end of the beginning since I’m committing myself to do this often), I encourage all of us to pray during this time. In all the ways we can. Be creative and let’s look to God to help us. Because that’s what God does.