The year 2020 will forever be associated with the global COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever your life was like at the beginning of this year, those strange and surreal months in spring and summer of lockdown and recovery will have had a profound impact. When you consider the life you were living before lockdown, how content were you with it? How purpose-full and fulfilling was your life? A friend of mine observed that the global pandemic was an unwelcome interruption to the lives that we had created for ourselves and were quite happy with. How might God be challenging you as you consider that?
A Purpose-full Life
As lockdown eased and our world moved into recovery, there was much talk about "essential" services and what could be resumed when. What would you name as essential for your life and your walk with God? We are now approaching the end of this extraordinary year. Life will be busy again, but to what extent have normal services resumed for you? How much of your pre-lockdown life have you picked back up? Lockdown brought about the sudden and dramatic stop of much of what kept us busy and where we gained our identity. When all of that was stripped away, what was left? What did you miss? What did you not miss?
This season is an extraordinary opportunity to engage deeply with what God is showing us about ourselves and what is most important to us. How were you living before and why were you doing what you were doing? For me, central to living a purpose-full and intentional life is living in tune with my values.
Identify Your Values
Our values, reflecting what matters most to us, were brought into sharp focus by the pandemic. We would all list many things that we say are important. Boil that list down into five or six core values—the central passions that motivate us, provide a road map for our lives, and form the basis of our decisions.
Our core values are the foundational beliefs that anchor our lives—the basis of our character, attitudes, actions, ethics, and personal beliefs. They are often deeply ingrained assumptions that we have picked up from early influences. We are not always conscious of what they are or how they shape us—which is why emerging from lockdown presents such a startling opportunity to explore this further.
There are challenges here, too. Living according to our values can be costly when those values conflict with those close to us. When our values are unmet or neglected, or we compromise them, stress and anxiety can result, as we try to live what is essentially a false life.
How do we identify our core values? A good place to start is to think back to when you were a child. Consider what qualities were true of you then. Think, too, about characteristics that you displayed at times when you were at your best. What are things people cannot stop you from doing? What did you learn about your life during lockdown? Ask those who know you well to describe you. What will they say matters to you most based on how you live your life? Then, try to condense all that you learn into five or six key words that sum up your core values.
How Will You Spend Your Time?
As we become clearer on what matters to us most, we are then in a strong position to make intentional decisions about how we use our time and energies in this new season. This is an opportunity to consider what spiritual practices and rhythms best help us engage with God. Consider the time you had during lockdown, when there was so much fear and uncertainty, but also perhaps more space. What did you find helpful to sustain you spiritually, and how can you continue that now?
Perhaps you took up journaling to process all the emotions that were flooding through you, and, in so doing, discovered a rich way to have a conversation with God and hear from Him. How can you make this an ongoing part of your life now?
Maybe you discovered a renewed connection with nature—the clarity of air, the volume of birdsong, the spring flowers that continued to flourish each day, living out their purpose and praising their Creator by their very presence. Maybe on your daily walk you rediscovered a joy in seeing God’s hand through creation and a way to converse with Him. Did the wonders of creation bring a sense of perspective to life that enabled you to remain grounded in this moment rather than being fearful about the next? You can choose to commit to incorporate this practice into your day.
What Will You Prioritize?
Our reflections on life during lockdown allow us to reconsider our priorities for this next season in terms of family, work, friends, faith, church, and community.
Maybe one of your core values is family—yet in pre-lockdown, much of your time was spent with work. What boundaries can you put in place around your work now to free up more time with those who are most precious to you? Did you rediscover a love of creativity during lockdown, which you identify as one of your core values? What changes can you make to your daily and weekly activities to include more time for creative pursuits? Is hospitality a core value and yet, before lockdown, you were out of the habit of inviting people into your home? What does it mean for you to reconnect with this essential part of you and open your home and heart to others?
Encouragement, service, learning, communication, justice—whatever your core values─take some time with God to prayerfully consider how He wants you to express these essential elements of who He made you to be. Seek Him as you bring your core values into line with His ultimate value system, the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:23).
Moving Forward
Understanding our core values and all we learned about what is essential to us gives us an extraordinary opportunity to re-write the script to our lives. It helps us to humbly open ourselves to what God has stripped away that was not of Him. Together with His Spirit, we can make choices based on His priorities. In keeping with what we value most─the essentials─we can build a stronger foundation that will anchor us to Him for whatever is next.
