Greetings friends,
Now that COVID-19 is here, our daily lives look much different than just a week ago. Last Friday, I put my kids on a plane to stay with their grandparents in Georgetown, TX for a week while Allison, I, and three others planned to travel to Fort Wayne, IN for a three-day workshop on “Calling Disciples.” While the kids made it safely to Texas, the workshop and trip to Indiana were called off. Since then, it seems like most scheduled events and gathering places have closed. Schools closed, churches closed, sports seasons were suspended, restaurants have limited their offerings or closed, the public has been advised to keep a safe distance from each other to help slow the spread of the virus. While these are all necessary efforts that need to happen, it can make us feel like life has been upended.
The good news is that we serve a God who is not surprised by any of this and who deeply cares for each person. This is the same God who reaches out to us in love and that will be with us and bring us through. You can probably recall times in your life when you sensed God’s presence with you through a difficult or trying circumstance. That God continues to be with you now.
Allison and I are beginning to think about what it will look like when the kids return home and what our daily routines will be like with no school and with me working from home. It will be a huge change for us and we want to be intentional about how we care for our whole selves and each other.
I was reading 2 John this morning and the words “walk in love” jumped out at me. John writes, “I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love” (2 John 5-6). John reminds us to walk in love as Jesus has loved us. We walk in love by loving God, loving others, but also in loving ourselves. It’s hard to love others if we aren’t loving our self. So think through what your days at home might look like. Think about the kind of patterns that you might want in your daily routines. How will you care for body, mind, and spirit so that you can be healthy and attentive to the needs of others? How will you open up space in your practices to acknowledge the continuous presence of God with you?
I want to share a couple of resources that might be of interest to you and could become part of your at-home practices:
1) Illustrated Ministry who produces the wonderful coloring sheets we’ve used in the past is offering free devotional coloring pages on a weekly basis. Click https://www.illustratedministry.com/flattenthecurve to receive a weekly email with the pages.
2) Church Next is offering a free online course called “Prayer and Worship in Our Homes.” This course might give you new ways to think about your devotion to God as we live an extended time apart as the scattered church. Here is the link if you want to learn more about it: https://www.churchnext.tv/library/alternative-formation-for-christians-in-quarantine/114762/about/
In the meantime, if you have any needs or prayer requests, please call or email me. Until next time, I trust you to God’s care.
Peace,
Rev. Chad Wible
Embrace Church
embraceSTL.org
