Swift & Varied Changes
This week marks the one-year anniversary of everything changing. I’ll never forget happened March 11, 2020. Our Neighborhood Group was discussing the previous Sunday’s sermon when a few phones buzzed with a news notification: an NBA player had tested positive for Covid-19 and the rest of the season was canceled. I remember listening to “The Daily” podcast the next morning and realizing our world was about to be upended at a scale I could not have imagined.
The pandemic has affected all of us, but not in the same way. Some of us have lost loved ones because of the virus, while others have contracted it and never developed symptoms. Some of us have loved working from home and welcomed the respite from the breakneck speed of our pre-pandemic life. Others are starved for more meaningful interaction and feel the toil “social distance” has taken on our mental health.
There’s a wonderful phrase in the Book of Common Prayer that captures the simultaneously universal and particular experience of this past year. It comes in the Collect we’ll pray next Sunday. We ask God for grace to “love what you command and desire what you promise” so that “among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.”
Swift and varied changes. Isn’t that right? The upheaval of these last twelve months has been both sudden and dissimilar.
What might God’s word to us be in this season? In a recent essayin the Atlantic, pastor Tim Keller relates how his faith has deepened after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last spring. One of the results of his growth is difficult to explain, he writes, but involves having “come to see that the more we tried to make heaven out of this world – the more we grounded our comfort and security in it – the less we were able to enjoy it.”
What does he mean? So many of his assumptions about the future were called into question. The reality of his cancer has helped him to realize that each and every day he has left is an occasion for joy. This recognition removes burdens from life it was not intended to bear and makes it possible to treasure the simple pleasures of life as a gift from God. Of course, this is not automatic. Keller also details in the article his habits of prayer and Bible reading. But the invitation is the same: God uses the swift and varied changes of our world to orient our hearts toward him – the place where true joys are to be found.
I hope you’ll join us this Sunday, whether in-person or online. We have a couple of special elements to mark one year of our experience of the pandemic.
Nick
P.s. don't forget to set your clocks forward this Saturday. We lose that precious hour, but we don’t want to lose you in worship that morning! See you there!