Stay at Home Journal Day 6

No illusions

I started writing this post last night and then a little this afternoon, and now…and I must have written 3 different posts… I am a little at a loss for words. While life as we know it has slowed down, this virus is moving, and moving fast. To be honest it is hard to process it all.

While outside there is this surge of infections, I am trying to create a sense of normalcy and a routine at home. In many ways there is nothing much you can really do but to follow the “Safer at Home” order and stay inside as much as possible. This is the best way to help, but it seems like I’m doing nothing. And even as we try to make things as normal as we can for the kids each day, we know nothing is normal.

No longer do I take finding toilet paper, bread, flour, and eggs for granted either. In this season, little things that we didn’t even give a second thought to have become some of the most important commodities both for survival, but also for jokes! I have never once in my life brought home toilet paper, eggs, and flour with a big smile on my face. But, we celebrate it BIG now. Who would have ever thought our woes with finding toilet paper would draw us together? But it has.

Trivial? Perhaps.

But during this time of uncertainty I find myself hoping to find normalcy through that common thread; if it’s TP or eggs, we have found something that we can authentically connect over. We know that this is the least of our concerns. So while we can, we joke around about TP and other mundane things of life to laugh about.

The jolt of this pandemic has helped us to see that we are not quite in control of our lives. I’ve thought a lot about the passage in James 4: 13-16:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— ¹⁴yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
James 4:13-16, ESV

I think about how many of us plan our lives assuming that all will go as planned without a second thought. We forget that we are a mist. We forget that we exist because God has given us another breath to breathe. If anything, the James 4:13-16 passage reminds us to remember who we are and to be humble about our plans. Have no illusions that we are in control.

So while we plan, we plan with humility knowing that tomorrow is not determined by me as I’d like to think. My tomorrow and our tomorrow is held by the One who is all-powerful, all-good, perfect in love, and sovereign. I am thankful that tomorrow is not up to me. If I honestly think about it, it would be too burdensome to even bear.