“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Are you rejoicing right now? This week? This last month? Are you bound by fear? Do you feel the need to help, yet feel so helpless? Are you obsessive in checking the news or the stock market? Or feeling stir-crazy with everyone home under these stay-at-home orders…. or lonely as you feel trapped, alone in your home? The Bible reminds us that “The Lord is near. "Do not be anxious about anything…” (Phil. 4:6). But you may wonder, "How do you do that? How can there not be anxiousness with so many unknowns facing us day-to-day?’ The Apostle Paul says “…but in every situation [that includes this coronavirus] by prayers and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God…”
When you come to the Lord with your prayers and requests: your prayers for protection for you and your loved ones, your prayers for comfort in your loneliness, your prayers of requests to be moved out of helplessness… when you are bowed down before your ever-present, all-powerful, all-loving Lord, do you praise Him, do you give Him thanks?
Perhaps you need to have a new perspective of “thanks” today, a little tweaking in how you think about what's going on in your prayer life at the moment. Yes, it is good to give thanks for our health, our family, the food that we have in our homes, but what would it look like to think about thanksgiving in a different light? What if it isn’t about what we see and experience in the “now”?
Philippians 4:7 says, “…the peace of God will transcend all understanding…” Not only can His peace transcend our understanding, but His ways transcend it as well. To transcend means "to rise above the limits of thoughts" - and God is, without a doubt, above the limits of what our minds can comprehend. We put our faith in an all-knowing God….or at least we confess with our mouths that we do, but do we believe that in our hearts and our minds? Do we believe He is working good in the chaos of our world today? And that He deeply cares about you and me? I know for some of us this comes easy and for others it can be so very difficult, but God meets us in our struggle.
“...And (He) will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus…whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:4-7, 9) Especially in these scary times, we can learn to rejoice in the Lord, we can put this mind shift into practice. We can seek His face and trust that He is working all things out for His greater good, even when what we see appears so dark. Give Him thanks for the unknown work He is doing and let His peace envelop you today and permeate to those around you. As you learn to rejoice and give thanks in the middle of the fear, He promises you a peace that transcends all our human understanding.
PRAYER
Lord, show us glimpses of the good that You are working in this chaotic pandemic mess even when things appear dark and You appear absent. Bring that glimmer of light and hope to our lives as we seek new ways to be thankful, that are beyond what our human eyes can see. Thank You that You will give us peace in the chaos and that You will guard our hearts and minds in the middle of it all. Amen.
~ By Rebecca Zickert. Rebecca is a wife in a blended family with two children of her own and two step children. Besides serving God through her family and writing, she also finds His joy in connecting with her students as a substitute teacher.
