Where Do We Go From Here?
Everything in the world is Crazy
but Jesus will never leave or abandon us
The world is a Topsie turvie place right now, full of uncertainty and fear for the future, and the world is collectively holding its breath, just hoping and praying that things don’t get any worse and that life regains some form of normalcy soon. This may very well be the scariest and most uncertain time in your life, and it is not a situation to be taken lightly. People all around the world are sick and dying, millions are out of work, not knowing if their industries will survive the shutdown, not knowing if they will even have a job to return to, not to mention the fear that they, or someone they love, will perish before things calm down.
As bad as things are right now, and as bad as they may become, this is far from being the first time of great unrest and anxiety, and it isn’t even the first such time in my life and both the Oklahoma City bombing and two separate terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Previous generations were called off to fight in Vietnam, taught to hide under their desks in the event of a nuclear blast during the cold war, (I have seen the videos of the tests and have no idea what hiding under a desk was supposed to actually accomplish), living in fear that every day may be the day humanity ends, and that any survivors would have to suffer through nuclear winter. Previous generations went through civil wars, two world wars, a great depression, famines, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, fires, floods, natural disasters of epic proportions, as well as the many pandemics that have ravaged the world. No, this is not the first time the world has been a scary place, but that does not make the trials we face any less real or urgent.
My entire childhood was full of fears and uncertainties, and since I grew up in an extremely impoverished family, there were often times when I had no idea when, or if, I would get to eat again, and any visit to a hospital or clinic was all but out of the question. I remember one time when I was a child when both my older sister and I had the whooping cough and we had no money to see a doctor, no money for medicine and little or no food. At times during our illness my mother had the very real fear that either me or my sister, or both of us, would be overcome by the illness and die. Strangely, what I remember most about that time was not how sick and miserable I was but rather how awesomely delicious the watermelon was that a nice man gave to us out of the kindness of his heart.
There have been times when every member of my immediate family was deathly ill at the same time and, because of a lack of money and opportunity, we ran out of both food and the means to heat the house. It would have be easy, and even understandable, to throw up your hands in a circumstance like that and give up and direct all of your anger to God, or to simply abandon all faith. Despite all of that, I don’t think a single day of my childhood passed without me witnessing my mother praying, mostly after my sisters and I had gone to bed and my mother thought we were asleep.
I often saw my mother kneeling down and praying by a step ladder that we kept in the house, though as a small child I did not fully understand what was going on and one day the curiosity got the better of me and I asked my mother about it. “Mom,” I asked, “Why are you always on your knees talking to the ladder?”
My mother had me sit on her lap and she told me all about God and why she prayed, and I recall asking her why she continued to pray even when things did not seam to change, and she told me that God loves us and that we are to trust God and pray to him regardless of how good or bad things are in our lives and trust that He has our best interest at heart. Growing up I always believed in God, but admittedly I didn’t always trust Him or believe that he had my best interest at heart. Don’t get me wrong, I truly wanted to believe that God was always looking out for me, but daily life made it difficult to believe that it was so.
As I have mentioned numerous times in my podcasts and blogs, my father was a failed preacher who used the Bible, taken out of context, to justify his horrible actions and he was an overly unpleasant and narcissistic individual who made the lives of all who interacted with him difficult and unpleasant. I remember numerous times when my mother would work long and hard to provide money for the family and my father would selfishly blow it on himself or gamble it away at the casino. Somehow, despite how horrible my father was, my mother never said a bad thing about him in my presence or that of my sisters as she wanted us to form our own opinion of him and didn’t think it was right for her to speak ill about our father to us. However, I could not ignore the obvious fact that he did not respect her, treated her poorly, and often made her cry. I remember numerous times when my parents would argue because my mother would earn money and my father would blow it before we could buy the things we needed.
One time my mother had managed to save enough money to buy essential groceries, but when we got to the register we realized that someone had stolen her purse and that we were flat broke. There is nothing quite so humiliating as putting groceries back because you can’t afford them, and that is a feeling I grew up experiencing. There are a lot of stories about wonderful people who step in and pay for people’s groceries in such circumstances, but this was not one of those times and we wound up eating food out of a dumpster, and that was far from being the only time that we did, and there were definitely times when we got food poison as a result. Sometimes I am amazed that I survived childhood. I could not see it then, but looking back I can clearly see that God had his hand in my life from the start and that it is only through the mercy and grace of God that I am alive.
When I was in college, in one of my classes, we were reading a story in which one of the characters was eating food out of the dumpster and one of the other students said, “No one actually eats out of a dumpster. No one is ever that hard up.” At that point I spoke up and said, “I have eaten out of a dumpster on many occasions.” Everyone, including the professor, was surprised and for the rest of class that day everyone asked me questions about what it was like to be that poor. I am not rich, far from it, but I have steady and reliable employment and I have a roof over my head that I own, I have a car, a boat, a motorcycle and always have food and heat. I have been richly blessed in life, and despite what some people think, blessings are not always realized through money or the accumulation of things.
Despite how many blessings I have had in my life, there have been more than a few times when I have been left holding the bag with no idea how to proceed, but just because you don’t know what to do and are uncertain of the future does not mean that God has abandoned you or that he has forgotten about you.
When Jesus called the apostles they left their careers to follow him, thinking he was going to overthrow Rome and lead the Jewish people to physical freedom, likely hoping for a place of prominence in his government, but since they did not pay as much attention to his teachings as they should but instead heard what they wanted, their world came crashing down around their heads when Jesus died and they were left wondering, “Where do we go from here?”
When Jesus died the apostles felt lost and afraid, and to them it seamed as if all was lost and that everything they had done the past few years was for naught. When Jesus came back to visit the apostles they were not boldly preaching the ressurection, they were hiding in fear from the rulers of the Jews with the curtains drawn and the doors locked.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
-John 20:19-22 NIV
Even after the apostles knew that Jesus had risen, even after he told them that he was sending them to share the good news, they returned to their previous lives and professions. When Jesus next visited the apostles they were fishing, and I have heard some people say, “there is nothing wrong with fishing,” and as a fisherman I wholeheartedly agree. First off the apostles were not doing some sort of recreational fishing, they were fishing commercially, and while there is also nothing wrong with fishing as a profession, the thing that was wrong is the apostles gave up on what they were called to do and went back to their old lives.
Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” they answered.
He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.
Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.
Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”
This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
-John 21:1-25 NIV
It is OK to have concerns and to be a little afraid, but don’t let that fear consume you, and remember, even if God doesn’t take you out of the storm, he is with you though the storm. We may not know what the future holds, and all we may be able to see is one step in front of us, but as Ralph Abernathy said, “I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.”