Your Session and I continue to keep you in prayer as we make our way through this strange and discombobulating time. We actually met by phone recently to do just that, and to consider next steps as we move closer to that time when worship may resume. We particularly prayed for our medical teams on the front lines of this invisible enemy and all those who are helping us manage the crisis. God bless them! As soon as we hear something official from our governing authorities that affects our reopening, we will let you know. In the meantime, we thank you for your prayers – and your support as you continue to send notes of encouragement and offerings to the church office.
I keep a devotional journal on my desk. In it there is a scripture verse for each day, inviting me to contemplate it and comment on it. Yesterday it was Habakkuk 3:18: I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation! My initial, unfiltered response was to wonder at how the prophet could be so joyful in the midst of calamity befalling his country, Judah being invaded and subjected to foreign rule. Just before this verse, Habakkuk declares he will wait patiently for God to make things right again, and Though the fig does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord….
What an amazing response to a difficult, crazy, uncertain time! This sparked in me a response. I wrote in my journal, “Joy and rejoicing go hand-in-hand; they are the same gift, the same response to the Sovereign God who saves.” I was impressed by how Habakkuk knew such joy in the hope that the Lord would indeed redeem the situation with a righteous justice in God’s good timing.
After I wrote in my journal, I discovered the verse following: The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. In other words, God gives sure-footed confidence! Habakkuk could rejoice because he knew beyond doubt that God is Sovereign and will lift up the people, no matter what circumstances they face.
Through Habakkuk’s witness, God is using this time to teach us how to rejoice, for most assuredly, my friends in Christ, God will lift us up, get us back on our feet, back to work, back in our sanctuary, to rejoice and be glad in our Savior! Until then, let us wait patiently for God to make things right again.
Blessings and peace, Dr. Gary