Subject to Change: A Word on COVID-19, Panic & Fear

Subject to Change: A Word on COVID-19, Panic & Fear

This year has been wild.

It’s barely been three months, and already we’ve seen a continent burning down, mourned the death of heroes, and endured a global viral outbreak. Events are being canceled all around the world: vacations, conferences, sports, worship services, amusement parks.

If you’re feeling that defeated “Should we just cancel 2020 entirely?” feeling, you’re not alone. I’m not above some of those emotions myself. Every morning is a prayer that the bottom won’t keep dropping. Every hour there’s a natural bracing for what's next?

Resolved, to Say Yes to Things That Scare Me

Resolved, to Say Yes to Things That Scare Me

There’s a hard truth that I can’t seem to get around, no matter how I splice it. It’s this: you cannot fulfill your greatest potential if you stay inside your comfort zone.

It’s hard to accept because everything in my nature seeks comfort. I don’t know about you, but nothing inside of me screams let’s just go around the bend when the path is straight. For most of us, security is in our wiring, it’s our default auto-pilot.

Lately, I've been mulling over this topic of greatness. I've studied a few influential leaders of our time. I can't honestly say I know exactly what makes people great…it’s some combination of talent, grit, hard work, and chance. But I do know that in every case it involves going beyond the boundaries of comfort.

On Life, Death, Sadness & Perseverance

This is a truth I have to remind myself often, even if my instincts oppose it. By nature I'm wired to make me the center of everything—my own needs, desires, disappointments. This is the great temptation I’m faced with every morning.

In his poem, As The Ruins Fall, C.S. Lewis writes:

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

He goes on to say how we cannot crawl outside of our skin and how we're self-imprisoned. Therein lies our problem: we are obsessed with ourselves and our own well-being.

Whether I’m basking in success or dealing with the hard blows of life, I want you to be caught in my vortex. I need you to play supporting actor to my lead. This is the disease of self.

My Love, a Note

My love.

I know it's been a difficult year for us. We've had many changes and challenges at our work. We've mourned and grieved with our dear friends over the passing of loved ones. And the plans we were making for our family were put on hold. Twice.

This wasn't what I had at all anticipated this time last year, when we were going into a new year with so much hope and cheer.

I can't tell you why trouble has met us. I can't pretend to know what lesson (if any) God wants to teach us. I suppose this is where, between human and divine wisdom, the line ends. The only place I know where to start is this: suffering is not unique to the human race, and it is certainly not for those who choose to follow Him. God has given so much goodness to us in our short years together. Like Job, should we say to ourselves to accept only the good, and not the bad?

Changing From Boy to Man

One afternoon, at the church library, a friend and I got into a conversation about what makes a man. Not so much the biology—what makes male different from female—as about what makes man different from boy.

Was it as simple as age? Or as superficial as appearance? Or did it come down to how many attributes he fulfilled as defined by Art of Manliness? Who's to say what the standard is, anyway—are you looking to judge this according to the holy book, or by the stick of our society and culture? (And God knows the latter has given us everything—from toxic hyper-masculinity to passive emasculation—but the answer.)

At one point we rattled off a bunch of people we knew. Look at this guy, he said. He has a steady job, a wife and two kids. He takes good care of his body and fixes things around the house. Agreed—he's a man. This other guy...he's living at home with his parents, struggling to make ends meet. He hasn't figured out a direction for his life. He calls him a boy.