What Will our New Normal Be?
It is easy to find ourselves desperate to reclaim lost time, lost opportunities, lost fellowship, and the loss of what we once called our normal routine. We all have done it or are doing it, trying with all our might to seek after and reclaim that which we perceive we have lost regardless of what may have caused the experience of loss.
In Matthew chapter 6, the same chapter in which Jesus taught us the Lord’s Prayer, He also taught us what it is we are to truly seek after. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) Have you paused to earnestly, desperately seek after lost faith and intimacy with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior? Have you paused to seek Him first above all else? Let’s be clear, we are not talking about the loss of a loved one, though in some ways this, too, may apply. Nevertheless, we are talking about the loss of everything else.
God may not have caused every experience of loss, but He certainly does not waste these experiences. In the loss of time, opportunities and so on, we may find ourselves in a position in which everything that once hindered, distracted, and enticed us away from true relationship and worship of Christ have been stripped away. By stripping these things away, we can see clearly that which our hearts truly desire. You know, the Scripture tells us that where our treasure is, there we may also find our heart. (Matthew 6:21) Perhaps God is using loss as a way to reveal what’s truly in our hearts and to draw us back to Him.
Are you desiring Christ, His word, His Kingdom, His Righteousness? Are you coming back to the sanctuary to worship God or are you coming back for something else?
Whatever your loss is, don’t allow it to pull your heart into the wrong places and wrong desires. Rather invite Christ into your loss. He can do for us what no one and nothing can. Jesus values each and every one of us, and He is here for us. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26)
Let us covenant together to seek first Christ’s kingdom and His righteousness in our spaces of loss, whatever those losses may be. Let us covenant to not want what we had, but seek after what Christ has prepared for us in the steps we take next. Perhaps Jesus Christ is calling us to a different, a better, and a more purposeful “normal” guided by His Holy Spirit living inside of us.
Proverbs 3:6 says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”
Love and Blessings Always,
Revs. Garritt and Sanette Fleming and Baby Esther
Schoeneck Moravian Church 