I am weary.

I started 2020 with such high hopes and lofty goals. Instead, I found myself in a marathon that I never signed up for. Of course, I didn’t realize it was a marathon going in. At first it seemed like a short sprint, and I was running on adrenaline. But as the days turned into months and I’ve had to let go of all my best laid plans time and again, my energy started to diminish and discouragement set in. Can you relate?

Runners talk about hitting the wall. For marathons, it often happens somewhere around mile 18. It's that moment when the physical exhaustion of what has come before and the mental exhaustion of what still lies ahead begins to grow overwhelming. It saps a runner’s will to continue, especially since the finish line is nowhere in sight.

I have officially hit the wall. I’m tired of being separated from my friends and church community, tired of how every issue seems divisive, tired of Zoom meetings and air hugs. And as we head back into a new round of quarantine, I don’t see the end in sight.

One of the most psychologically devastating aspects of hitting the wall is how lonely we can feel in our suffering. It doesn’t matter that we’re surrounded by other runners. We can’t see beyond our own exhaustion. We can’t feel their pain. And so we feel isolated, as if we’re the only ones who are struggling to keep going.

But I’m discovering that I’m not alone. As I speak with other pastors, friends and neighbors, I’m finding that they are also weary. They are also lamenting the myriad losses that this season has brought upon us all. Just knowing that I’m not the only one struggling has somehow eased the weight of my weariness.

God never intended us to run this race alone. He designed us to do life in community, to spur one another on and bear one another’s burdens. So may we fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who guides our steps and sets our pace. And may we lean on one another through this marathon. If you’re feeling lonely, isolated, discouraged or depressed, please don’t try to gut through it on your own. Please call someone. Process what you’re feeling and ask them how they’re doing. Share the weight. Hold one another up.

Just don’t let the wall be your finish line. 

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Galatians 6:1

Putting the Pieces Together

On the night before Jesus was crucified, he prayed for his disciples, knowing that difficult times lay ahead for the fledgling church. But he didn’t just pray for them. He also prayed for us:

“My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one…so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-21, 23)

Several times in this brief prayer, Jesus prays that the church would be one – that we would be unified through the Holy Spirit and our commitment to love one another. But this unity wasn’t just something He wanted for us because it would make our lives easier. Jesus suggests that the Church’s unity would serve as proof to a skeptical world that He truly was from the Father and is the head of the Church.

Our unity is pretty important to Jesus.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t always seemed to be as important to the Church.

More often than not, it feels as if the Church is a 37-million-piece puzzle, fractured by countless disagreements pertaining to things like theology, liturgy, and worship preference. Sadly, rather than unifying around our shared faith in Jesus, churches have historically tended to fixate on the differences and propped up their own sense of superiority by pointing out the flaws in the other church communities around them. We’ve perpetuated this disunity by competing against one another, speaking negatively behind one another’s backs, and stealing one another’s members to swell our own ranks.

Now don’t get me wrong – despite our fractured state, churches have done a lot of good. We’ve shared the gospel, started ministries in our communities, and sent missionaries around the world. But at the end of the day, our disunity has undermined our efforts, because we were never intended to reflect the heart of Jesus by ourselves.

We’ve been acting like a puzzle where all the pieces yearn to reflect the picture on the box, but rather than doing so together, each piece is trying to do so on its own. What a futile endeavor. Think about how much time and resources have been poured into duplicate ministries, when we could have been working together; think of how much effort we’ve expended simply trying to outdo the churches down the street, rather than coming alongside them to care for the city together.

Every church community is a unique and valuable piece of God’s Kingdom. But if we hope to faithfully reflect the heart of our Creator into our community, then we need one another, because together we form a far greater, more comprehensive image of God than we ever could on our own.

That’s why, despite the frustration and uncertainty of this COVID-19 shutdown, I am encouraged. I’m seeing the Church in my city unite in ways I could have only dreamed of a couple months ago.

Before this shut-down, the pastors in my city were scheduled to share lunch once every couple months. Now, we’re connecting, planning and praying with one another every week via Zoom.

At the beginning of the year, we had hoped to get representatives from 10-15 churches to participate in the National Day of Prayer. Instead, we had over 150 churches from across our county join together in a 5-day round-the-clock prayer initiative, which included nightly online worship and prayer gatherings.

And there is no end to the generosity, not just towards the city but towards one another: churches with live streaming equipment are helping churches that don’t have their own. Churches who own their buildings are opening them to church communities who had been meeting in schools, so that they'll have a place to meet once we get the go ahead. Rather than competing with one another as church leaders have traditionally done, pastors in our city are sharing resources, finances, ideas and expertise with one another.

It’s an exciting time to be part of the Church in our city, and I know it is affecting the way our community looks at us. More importantly, it is affecting the way our neighbors and our civic leaders look at Jesus, because we are finally reflecting His heart together.

The Church Is Best Beyond the Box

I have a friend who collects Star Wars toys. He keeps them all in pristine condition, safely wrapped within their original packaging. And while his collection is expansive (and expensive), I can’t help but think he’s kind of missed the point. I mean, what good is a toy if you never take it out of the box? 

I suppose the same could be said for the church.

We have some beautiful church buildings in this city, and I know there are a lot of people who lament the fact that we can’t use them right now. I do, too. As a pastor, I look forward to the day we can worship face-to-face in our sanctuaries again. But while our buildings stand empty and unused, I want to remind us that our buildings have never been the church – they are just the boxes that hold the church when its gathers. WE are the church, and I have to admit that the church has been far more active and effective at loving our community since we’ve been forced out of our boxes.

During this time, we don’t have the luxury to sit back and wait for our neighbors to come wandering into our doors on Sundays. We have had to get creative. And let me tell you, I’m in awe of the myriad ways the Church in Costa Mesa has united to care for our neighbors.

For instance, several churches in our city united together to organize a fund to help the most financially impacted members of our city, and they seeded it with $80,000 of their own money. Then they got the word out, and people from the church community all across our city added over $400,000. To date, nearly 500 hurting families in our city have been helped with grants because of the Enough For All Fund (see enoughforallfund.com to donate or apply).

We also rallied together to provide basic resources for neighbors in need. Currently through an initiative called Love Costa Mesa, we are providing hundreds of boxes of food to needy families in our community each week. This has been done in partnership with local nonprofits like Trellis and Fresh Beginnings Ministries (see LoveCostaMesa.org for more details).

Then there are the prayer initiatives. Early on, when it dawned on many of the pastors that we would still be quarantined through Easter, we launched a 3-week prayer initiative. Dozens of churches participated and hundreds of people prayed for our city around the clock for three solid weeks. Then, after Easter, we broadened the invitation to the churches in our County. Ultimately, over 150 churches all across Orange County joined in a 5-day prayer gathering, which included nightly worship and prayer gatherings hosted by different cities.

Talk about unity!

I guess we had to get outside of our boxes to start being able to play well with one another. I’m glad we have, because we’re so much better when we work together.

It’s kind of sad that it takes a pandemic like this one to think outside of the box, but it’s nothing new. Even the early church struggled to get out of their box. Shortly after his resurrection, Jesus told his followers that once His Spirit empowered them, they would be his witnesses starting there in Jerusalem, and radiating out into the wider region of Judea, to the untouchables of Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the earth. But even after the Spirit came, the believers stayed put in Jerusalem. I suppose it was more appealing to congregate with people who thought and acted like they did than to move into unfamiliar territory. But that wasn’t what Jesus had called them to do. He’d called them to GO! In the end, it took major persecution to push them out of their box and into the wider world, but once that happened the church exploded.

I sense that something similar is happening here. God has ripped open our boxes, shaken us out into our neighborhoods and said, “Now do what I made you to do. Love your neighbors, move toward the hurting, bind up the broken, share with the needy. Don’t just talk about it – do it!” 

And we're actually doing it! The church is radiating the love of Jesus into our city like I’ve never seen before. I pray that we won’t stop once this crisis passes. I pray we will continue to work together irrespective of what “church building” we call home. After all, there’s only one Church in our city and Jesus is the head of it, so we might as well stop competing against one another and keep working together.

In short, I look forward to the day we can gather in our churches again, but I don’t want to just go back to how things always were. The stakes are too high; there are far too many hurting people in our communities to simply rush back into the safety of our buildings and get comfortable.

We were never made to stay in our box.

When Can the Church Reopen?

As a pastor, one question I’m getting asked a lot lately is, “When can we reopen the church?” I get it. I miss the gathering of our church family on Sundays and throughout the week as well. But I also want to be wise about when and how we do this, because the stakes are simply too high, both health-wise as well as in regards to the church’s relationship with our neighbors.

Some within the larger church community (outside of Costa Mesa) have been pushing for a restart to gatherings at the end of the month regardless of what the directives from our Governor and other civic leaders happen to be. I understand that they see the mandated closure of the churches both as an unconstitutional and unbiblical limitation. After all, the First Amendment of our Constitution affords us the freedom of religious expression, and scripturally when the Jewish leaders demanded the Apostles stop preaching in the name of Jesus, Peter’s response was, “We must obey God rather than human beings” (Acts 5:29).

However, I would suggest that these current limitations are not about freedom of religious expression so much as they are about public safety. We are still able to spread the gospel and connect with one another. In fact, through live streaming and Zoom, the church has actually been reaching a much wider circle of people than we had been able to when we relied solely upon meeting in the church building on Sundays. So we are not being told to stop sharing the gospel. Rather, we are being asked to stop gathering in groups for a season in order to stem the spread of a virus that can severely impact the most vulnerable members of our population. That’s a different story altogether.

The Apostle Peter also called on believers to “submit yourself for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor [in our case the Federal government] or to the governors” (1 Peter 2:13-14). He explains that our submission and our witness go hand in hand; by submitting we are removing a potential obstacle between unbelievers and the gospel. The Apostle Paul made a similar argument in Romans 13. So unless we are being asked to disobey God, which we are not, then we have a moral obligation to obey those in authority over us.

Furthermore, I cannot help but consider what it would cost us to defy our public officials’ directives and gather early: not only would we be exposing our members to possible exposure, but we’d be declaring to our neighbors that we don’t value their health and safety. Infected people infect people, and one particularly frustrating aspect of COVID-19 is that people are infectious long before they exhibit symptoms. So gathering prematurely not only endangers our own health, but the health of our neighbors. On top of that, we’d be communicating to our city officials that we are not willing to limit our freedoms out of love for our fellow citizens. In effect, by gathering early we’d be sending the opposite message to the one we’ve been working so hard over the years to communicate through our actions: namely, that we love our city and are willing to serve them. Our waiting is an act of service.

This is the first time in my lifetime that the authorities have asked us to stop meeting in order to help protect the health of our community, but it’s not the first time the church has faced it. Back in the 1600’s, Richard Baxter, who was a puritan pastor, wrote, “If the magistrate for a greater good such as the common safety forbids church assemblies in a time of pestilence…it is our duty to obey him.” However, he goes on to explain that if any authority were to outlaw the church gathering “as a renunciation of Christ and our religion, then it is not lawful formally to obey them.”1  That seems reasonable to me.

So we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the day we can gather again in our church buildings. But we are not waiting passively for the go-ahead from the city. In fact, a large number of local pastors including myself are actively working with our city council in order to draft guidelines for the eventual reopening of our church buildings. I will keep you informed on any developments. But for now, we will wait and pray and live stream and gather in Life Groups over Zoom and radiate the love of Christ into our Spheres of Influence. After all, our buildings might be closed, but WE are the church, and we never close.

1: Practical Works of Richard Baxter, V.5, Question 109.
 

Walking Through the Storm

by Cindy Washbon

Our world today is different from the way it was just two months ago. We find ourselves separated from family, friends, co-workers and normal everyday routines. Many of us are experiencing a wide variety of emotions: despair, anxiety, fear, loneliness.

We often think of grief as an emotion only related to the death of a loved one. However, in this season many of us are grieving the death of a life that "was" and an uncertainty of what will "be". Grief does not come labeled as "One size fits all". Grief is a very personal emotion and uniquely different to each person.

So in this time of uncertainty, we must be patient with our loved ones. Everyone will process this season differently, and it will elicit different emotions within us. Some of us are more exhausted, others more energized by this change. Some of us wear our emotion on our sleeve; others bury it under busyness or binge-watching Netflix. Some may express grief through sorrow, others in anger. Many of us will feel anxiety and fear.

Whatever emotions are bubbling up, and however it is expressed, remember that our grief is unique to ourselves, shaped not only by our current life circumstances, but by our previous circumstances as well. Past wounds, past unresolved grief will color this current season of grief.

So there is no “right way” to walk through this storm; our grief is not "One size fits all." Perhaps the best gift we can give one another is permission to be messy, to be unresolved, and give one another both the space and time to grieve.

But one thing to keep in mind, as Christ followers, is that we don’t walk through this storm alone.

I think of another time my husband Reid and I found ourselves in a season of fear and confusion like this one. It was the Fall of 2013, and Reid had just undergone open heart surgery to repair a leaky valve. Two weeks into his recovery I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Within a month of being diagnosed I underwent a double mastectomy. Our lives were changing rapidly and we were very unclear what our future was going to look like. (Sound familiar?) At that time, I'm not sure we would have acknowledged that we were experiencing grief for the loss our past "healthy lives," but looking back I think we were.

I vividly remember the night of my surgery. I was kept in Pre-Op all night, without a regular nurse checking on me. It was a very long and uncomfortable night and I kept waking up with an overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety. However, I was not alone. Every time I woke up, the words " Trust and Believe" interjected themselves into my “what if” worrying and I knew that my Heavenly Father was there to guide me through this storm. His presence gave me hope in the face of the unknowns.

Hope looks beyond our circumstances, to the one who stands above them. Our Creator hasn’t abandoned us or left us to fend for ourselves. He’s right here with us in the storm of uncertainty and “what if’s.” And He’s promised to never leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5). So our hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness.

We lament like the disciples did when they found themselves in the midst of another storm, one where all hoped seemed lost and yet Jesus was fast asleep in the bow: “Jesus, how can you possibly sleep through this?!" they cried. "Don’t you see what’s happening?” But their cries were not cries of despair, but rather cries for help. Though the wind and waves were overwhelming, their hope was in their Savior, who was in the storm with them. 

Like them, we find ourselves tossed by each wave of change, buffetted by the steady headwind of discouraging news. But like those disciples in the boat, we are not alone in this storm. And like the Psalmist, we cry, “Now Lord, what do I wait for? My Hope is in you.” Psalms 39.7 

We must allow our grief of a life and world that "was" to give way to a hope of what will be. And we need to remember that we are not enduring this alone. God is right here with us. As long as we keeping looking to Him and loving one another, we will get through this current storm we find ourselves in, and our faith may actually grow through it, not diminish. Why? Because our Father won’t abandon us. He won’t turn His back on us. He will be by our side showing us his grace and mercy through it all.

"O my people, trust in him at all times,
Pour your heart to him, for God is our refuge."
Psalms 62:8


*Cindy Washbon is a cancer survivor and a leader in Lighthouse Community Church's Cancer Support Ministry. 

Sharing Our Comfort by Sharing Our Grief
By Leslie Chaney

My son was tragically killed when he was only 26. Words cannot express the anguish of losing a child, and for years I was drowning in my grief. But I didn’t grieve alone. My Father God was there with me, even if I couldn’t always sense His presence. And one day, God used this verse to remind me that He could even use my pain to help others.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves received from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 

Comfort is an interesting thing. Like grief, it’s not one-size-fits-all. People don’t receive comfort in the same way. One person may want to be left alone, while another may not want to be alone at all. Some people don’t’ want to hear or read anything, while others like myself want truths to hang onto as the waves of grief crash over us.  During my grief, I read many comforting books like a “A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss” by Jerry L. Sittser. I also researched and studied the scriptures for truths about grief to find some solace there. But not everybody does that, because what comforts one person may not comfort another.

So what are we to do when we seek to comfort someone who is grieving? Here are a few suggestions from one who not only walks with people through grief regularly, but has walked through my own grief:

While we may be in the same storm, we’re not all in the same boat: How one person responds to a painful loss can look radically different from another. Their reaction to loss can be affected by a lot of things: Their current circumstances (financial, relational, etc.). How close they were to the person or thing they lost. Whether they have unprocessed loss in their past that is triggered by this current loss. Don’t think that everyone’s grief looks the same.

Let Them Cry: No one likes to watch the person they love break down. You feel powerless and desperate to ease the pain. But if your response to the grieving person's tears is "don't cry," even if it is meant in a comforting way, you are essentially telling them not to feel their emotions. If their grief is causing tears, then crying is a part of their grieving process. It is something they have to go through. Let them know that it is safe to cry in front of you. And remind them that it’s safe to cry out to God. He can handle our emotions. He can take our messiness, and He cares. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).

Be Real: It is both obvious and uncomfortable when you spew out clichés because you are (understandably) at a loss for words. Saying "It will be OK" doesn't help anybody because it isn't OK now. Be real. Tell them, "I don't know what to say, but I am so sorry and am here to help you in any way you need.”

Avoid Empty Clichés: Please don't say things like, “At least they're in Heaven." "God works in mysterious ways." "The Lord does everything for a reason." The “reason" doesn't matter right now — what matters is that someone or something that was dear to them has been lost. Leave the workings of God to God. Trying to second guess God is patronizing and minimizing as Job and his friends found out.

Give them room to grieve in unique ways: There is no right or wrong way to grieve after a loss. Don't tell them that they should be over it by now. Don't tell them that their grieving process is incorrect because it is different from yours. You need to give them room to experience mourning in their own personal way.

Be comfortable with silence: Silence can feel incredibly awkward. However, often there are no words that can help, so don't feel like you have to fill the silence while they grieve. The most important gift you can give someone while they walk through their grief is your presence. Spend time together, on the couch, on the beach, on Zoom or on the phone, even if you don’t say anything.

Let them talk about things over and over. One of the most important roles that you will take on during this awful time is that of a listener. They may initially react to the loss by not wanting to open up at all. Let them know that you are ready to listen whenever they are ready to talk. Once that moment comes, they may need to vocalize the same emotions or memories over and over, don't tell them that you have already heard the story. Just listen again and again.

Offer practical help: Don’t just say, “I’m here to help if you need me.” Be specific. You can offer to help plan the funeral, run to the grocery store, walk the dog, do their laundry, etc. Let them know that you are available, and suggest specific ways to help.

Remember that grief doesn't have an end date: Once the initial period of grief has passed doesn’t mean the grieving process is over. Just because someone begins to return to their regular routines, starts to laugh again, and seems to be fine doesn’t mean they are fully finished with their grief. Grief will wash over them like unexpected waves, hitting when they least expect it. That’s normal. Additionally, anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays will be heartbreaking for a while, but you can be there and help them get through it.

Don’t Grieve Alone: One of the hardest aspects of this pandemic is the way it’s forced us to be separated when we long to be together. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find community and support as you walk through your own grief. Lighthouse’s Grief Share Ministry that I lead is meeting weekly via Zoom. GriefShare offers a safe place for us to process our grief together, and to share our burdens so that the weight of our emotions isn’t so overwhelming. If you’d like to find our more, please email me at gsgriefsjourney@gmail.com.

Perhaps one upside to the pandemic is that everyone is grieving simultaneously. Whether it’s a death, a canceled vacation, or a layoff, the whole world has lost something. Though it’s hard to endure, I take solace in the fact that we have a Father in Heaven “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:4)

The Problem of Pain - Part 3

This week, we’ve been exploring the uncomfortable topic of pain. On Monday, when I penned the first of these three devotionals, I chose to title it “The Problem of Pain,” only later remembering that one of my oldest and most trusted mentors wrote a book by the same name. 

You may know who I’m talking about; his name is CS Lewis. No, I never met him in person. He’d died long before I was born, but he helped shape my spiritual worldview nonetheless, first as a child when I read The Chronicles of Narnia, and later as an adult through his non-fiction works like Mere Christianity and The Four Loves. Lewis has taught me so much about things like life and love, God and grace. He’s one of those names who needs no introduction and whose words seem to carry greater weight, simply because they came from him. Today, I want to allow CS Lewis to teach us about pain.

You may not know this, but Lewis is someone who was well acquainted with the multifaceted pain life can throw at us. One of his earliest memories was at the age of four, when his dog Jacksie was struck and killed by a car. That loss hit him so powerfully that he began calling himself Jacksie (later shortened to Jack), and the name stuck, becoming the nickname his family called him for the rest of his life. But that was only the first of many helpings of pain for Lewis.

He lost his mother when he was 10, and was then emotionally abandoned by his father and sent away to boarding school. As a teenager, he suffered through a chronic respiratory illness, and then postponed his education to fight in World War I. There, on the front lines of France as a 19-year-old, he was injured when an Allied shell fell short of its target and accidentally hit his trench, killing two of his friends and taking him out of the war. During his slow recovery, he suffered from bouts of depression and deep spiritual doubt. But the worst was still to come. Many years later, he had to watch his beloved wife Joy suffer from a malignant cancer that claimed her life when she was only 45.

Through all of this, Lewis grappled with his faith and the glaring presence of pain in a world God had labeled ‘good.’ Several of his non-fiction books were borne out of the soil of his suffering, most notably The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed.

The irony of suffering is that the dark valleys are hard, uncomfortable places to be, and we’re tempted to run away when we find ourselves in them; however, they can also be fruitful places where the deepest growth can occur. And this was true for Lewis. The pain he endured was awful and he grieved deeply, as evidenced by his writings, but those painful seasons also produced some beautiful insights on life that continue to resonate for people experiencing pain today.

For instance, in The Problem of Pain, Lewis explains why admitting we’re hurting emotionally is far harder than acknowledging physical pain:

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’ ”

Ouch. I will admit that, as a guy, I’m ok admitting that my back hurts, but it’s far less comfortable confessing that my heart hurts or that I’m feeling discouraged. That’s just a little too vulnerable, just a bit too exposing. That said, one of unexpected silver-linings of this current season is that, since everyone is suffering, it’s more socially acceptable to admit it. But once this current crisis has passed, when the stores are all open and we’ve moved on (which will happen), what then? Will we go back to burying our heartache and sadness under a forced smile? I hope not.

In the same book, Lewis also describes the way God uses pain to get our attention:

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Often, suffering is the one of the first pieces of evidence atheists give for rejecting the idea of God. But for Lewis, a man who sought to ignore God through his 20’s and early 30’s, his suffering was where he became most aware of God’s presence. It was in his moments of grief, when his pain overwhelmed his determination to run from God and drove him to his knees, that he found God was right there with him, and had been the whole time. And it was in his moments of weakness that he discovered just how strong God truly was.

But as Lewis points out in the quote above, our pain isn’t simply a megaphone for us, but for the world around us. The way we work through pain often speaks far more loudly and convincingly than our lofty platitudes posted on social media from the comfort of our couch.

I will never forget the unexpected joy bubbling out of Tony Peca when I went to visit him in the hospital after he barely survived a heart attack. His calm, confident hope felt so utterly out of place, and yet it spoke volumes to me and everybody else who walked into that hospital room about the depth of his faith.

And I think of Johanna, my family friend, who passed away last year after a long battle against cancer. We miss her, but what stands out even stronger is the way her faith was revealed through her struggle. The cancer slowly consumed her body, but it couldn’t touch her trust in God. It stole her comfort, her breath, and finally her life, but it couldn’t steal her joy.

I will admit that it’s really easy to declare our trust in God when the sun is shining and we have plenty of food in the fridge and money in the bank. But it’s in times of crisis like this when our true feelings are revealed, both to ourselves and to everyone else around us.

So I suppose the question we need to ask ourselves is, How’s your faith doing right now?  

What has this current crisis revealed to you about your relationship with God?