We live in days where finding a new normal is not optional—it is essential! Let’s face it, devastation is fast becoming our daily headline reality.
If I need my world to be a place that is always safe, sane, and saccharine?
Then, I will be savagely disappointed.
No, I must find a new “Kingdom-normal.” One that is fixed upon unseen things. Things that change not—when all around me has transformed my world into a waste-howling-wilderness full of unanswered questions and desperate needs.
Today, I have to find my stability in the midst of a world replete with war and famine, terror and catastrophe, injustice and hatred—safe, sane, and saccharine, rarely apply!
I must choose between giving up or going on.
In the dark days after Dunkirk Winston Churchill said,
“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”
Enduring hardship, in a world-turned-wilderness has never been anyone’s first choice.
But it must be mine.
Because Jesus gave it to us straight.
He was not One to sugar-coat anything.
Because He endured to the end?
He demands the same from me.
Giving up is no longer on my list of options.
God is a safe place to hide,
ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
courageous in seastorm and earthquake,
Before the rush and roar of oceans,
the tremors that shift mountains.
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us. Psalm 46: 1-3
…Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple.
Luke 14:33 The Message
