What Should We Do?

By now you’re probably on season 4 of whatever show your binge watching, and the novelty of staying or working at home has already grown more stale than the aroma of your teenage boys socks! So, what should we do?

First thing I would say, is to do as much of your normal routine as possible. Yes, I know that some of it isn’t possible, but much of your daily routine you can still do. I love the words of Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, who said this when staring into the face of his own mortality:

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands…Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die,but the dead know nothing…Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do….Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days…Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. – Ecclesiastes 9 NLT (selected verses)

Nearing the close of WWII CS Lewis, the author and theologian, famously wrote:

“How are we to live in an atomic age?” Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation…the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies but they need not dominate our minds.

The second thing I’d challenge you to do, and I believe God would have us do, is to reconnect with both God and our family. I’d like you to open the calendar app on your phone and look at your schedule prior to two weeks ago. How many of those ‘extremely important’ events have been pulled from your life without you, your children, or your spouse dying?!

Maybe one of the greatest gifts from this craziness is that many of us reclaim our lives! When everything is taken from you it becomes really easy to see what matters most! And, when it comes to God, you’ve always been saying how you WANT to set aside time each day…well it looks like your day is pretty wide open, maybe start that life-giving habit now?

Third, be productive! Don’t just sit around in your PJ’s waiting for the Door Dash dude or the Grub Hub gal to knock on your door, do something. Ephesians 5:15-16 says:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of your time, because the days are evil. (ESV)

In 1665 a young college student named Issac Newton…yeah him…was sent home because the Black Plague was spreading like wildfire across Europe. He could have easily wasted his time, gone on Spring Break with his boyz, or just walked around all day in his Sponge Bob Square Pants pajama bottoms, but no, he choose to apply himself.

During the year he was in quarantine he invented calculus, began studying the idea of light refraction and wrote his theories on optics, and there was one other thing…what was that? Oh Yeah, he discovered and started formulating the Laws of Gravity!!! Later in his life others coined his time away from college for the plague as the ‘annus mirabilis’ or the Year of Wonders. He returned to college and the rest as we say is history.

Seize the moment my friends! Live, Reconnect, and Make something happen!

Dave