a house of cards
As the current situation with COVID-19 unfolds, I rotate through a series of emotions. I am frustrated with all the “panic.” Then I get uncomfortable. Am I taking this seriously enough? So I go buy more toilet paper. And get frustrated with the “overreacting” people in line ahead of me.
I alternate between skepticism and uneasiness. I want predictability. I want my ordinary life back. And then I remember that Jesus taught me that “ordinary life” is full of trouble, thorns, thistles, and death.
Read this this quote by CS Lewis, who lived through a few epidemics and world wars. Read slowly. Answer the questions after it to help re-orient your frame-of-mind during these strange times.
I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. –C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Suggestions for Response:
- Make a short list of your toys threatened in this time.
- Write a sentence describing your “real treasure.”
- What choices can you make today to be “consciously dependent” over the next four weeks?
- What difference could this make to you and those around you?
God give us “strength from the right source.”
Roger Edwards joined The Barnabas Center in 1991. He works with both individuals and couples, helping people confess their need and embrace their available choices to lead healthier lives. Roger also teaches and leads discussion groups and retreats applying the Gospel to everyday life. He is a licensed clinical mental health counselor (LCMHC), holds a master’s degree in biblical counseling from Grace Theological Seminary in Indiana and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is married to Jean; they have seven children and nine grandchildren.
