Just a storm in a teacup?

One of the things God has been teaching me in the last few years is to walk with Him moment by moment, day by day, becoming more reliant on Him for each step. As we walk into this season where our lives are being radically impacted with rapid change, this is even more important.

I come back to a word He gave me a while back:

“You only get grace for WHAT IS not WHAT IF”.

Each moment and circumstance we find ourselves in, He will give us the grace for at that time – generally not before it occurs.

A couple of weeks back, I had some quite clear words from God. The first was that this is a “storm in a teacup”. Far from diminishing the severity or seriousness of what is going on in our world, this is simply about perspective. Perspective is so important at this time.

If we connect with all the world is telling us about doom, gloom and our powerlessness in the face of tragedy and disease, it will leave us without hope.

However, there is another perspective.

Yes, from our human perspective, that tea cup and “storm” may be the size of the earth - enormous to us. And like the disciples in the boat with a storm raging, we can feel as though Jesus is asleep – we can’t understand why He is not more concerned, why He isn’t doing more. Given the scope of what is unfolding and the absolute focus from media, it can be so difficult to turn our focus elsewhere.

However, there is another perspective and this is the one we need to grab hold of. From God’s vantage point, the earth is more the tea cup size, even smaller. He is more than able to deal with any storm on our planet.

He has not been caught by surprise and He is not disrupted!

Sure, we get to join with Him, with what He is doing, through prayer, through loving each other, even though that might need to be in more creative ways. We don’t have to partner with panic and fear and anxiety. They are already working well in our communities without our help!

(C) https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-jimig

Alongside this picture of God’s perspective on this “global pandemic”, I was asking Him what He wanted me to know about the way forward. I love His sense of humour, because straight away I sensed, “Have I told you it is time to panic, be anxious or worry?” I said, “No”. And His response, “Then it is not time to panic, be anxious or worry!”. Something shifted in me, and as crazy as it might sound, deep in my core I sensed His lack of fear or worry – I connected with it.

If He is not worried, neither do we need to be.

Friends, we all like to feel that we are doing something to help when disaster strikes or even looms. The best thing place to start with is to deal with our own fears and anxiety. Just as the cabin crew tell us on airplane flights – you need to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can help others.

The way we do this at this time is through our connection with God. The difficult part of this (and I know, because I have struggled with it too!), is getting ourselves still before Him, stilling our racing thoughts. One way to do this is to tell Him all you are really feeling and ask Him what He wants you to know about it, or how He feels. As I have done that myself, I have repeatedly seen His face fill with anticipation and excitement – there is a sense that He is about to do something amazing. The words, “Just watch what I am about to do!”, come to mind.

In terms of other aspects of managing ourselves through this, as numerous others have already pointed out, minimising our interaction with worldly news and media is really important. Yes, don’t disconnect entirely, but if we spend too much time there, we can open ourselves up to get infected with fear and panic which is not of God.

Just as we are “socially distancing” physically to prevent any infection from the virus, we also need to do this from those who are obviously carrying the “virus” of panic and passing it on to all and sundry.

If we deal with ourselves and press into God we will find He is faithful. He will give us what we need – starting with His peace and comfort. We can pray – but we also need to move from the desperate, begging prayers into prayer that waits on Him what His solutions. How can we be light, peace and comfort in the now too obvious darkness? What does He want to shift in our ways of seeing life and false comforts and refuges that we have packaged around us? How does He want to stretch and shift us and mold us into new ways of being?

While it is difficult to be stripped away from so many of those things that have been our “always”, there is another aspect of this situation that is opportunity: it is an opportunity to shift things up, to cleanse and remove things that have held us back, distracted us or filled our time with “must”. In this time, there is an opportunity to reassess the things that we have thought were essential to our lives, that we couldn’t do without (like toilet paper!).

What does that look like for you?