I’ve been thinking a lot about what life will be like when the vaccine has made its rounds and we are able to get out and about.  I have missed my church family and so look forward to gathering with them again.  I have missed dinner and a movie.  That was the first date for Lisa and me and remains one of my favorite things to do.

I miss the club sandwich and fries at Starvin Marvins. We look forward to traveling to Texas to be with Noel and family next Christmas.  And I miss being able to just go and do when I feel like it.

A lot has been said about a new normal and what it will look like.  Many people will want to simply return to where they were when all this started.

I admit that there is a great deal of comfort in this plan.  Familiar, semi-focused, and simply drifting along with the tumbling tumble weed.  But there are dangers I’ll bet you haven’t thought about.  First, you can become so comforted that you never want to move.  Second, your focus becomes on controlling your life so completely that you fear change and all of life becomes maintaining things.  Remember what the church was like for some folks in the 50’s?  The best-meaning folks became keepers of the aquarium. No change was good change.  Life passed them by.

Instead, I would offer you a different vision.  How about starting over from scratch?  The past is the starting point, and we seek what God would have us be and what He would have us to do.  Embracing the changes we want and choosing a future instead of trying to seek the past.  
We can take the best with us and build upon it.  Honestly, aren’t there some things that you would like to leave behind?

God has said, “The old has gone, the new is here!”, and “all things have become new.” (2 Cor 5:17b NIV, KJV). The focus for me will be what is worth hanging on to.  Obviously, family ranks right up there.  But changes can come to almost everything.  For example, we have our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve.  That frees up the whole day for other things.  I can remember the hours that my mom spent in the kitchen on Christmas Day to the point that she was unable to enjoy the family she was cooking for.  Why?  It was because that was the way that it had always been.  So was the complaining, and that was also how it had always been.  Does your family have one of these traditions?

What would God have us do with a new start?  A blank slate that you can write the future upon.  That is what the new normal could be, a new beginning for all of us.  How about it?

God bless.

Pastor Bill