Day 20: “What does eternity feel like?”

Day 20

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith, published by the Patuxent

 Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland, by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

WEEK THREE: FRIDAY 3 APRIL 2020

“What does eternity feel like?”

“It has been just over a week since Americans started to be ordered to stay at home and out of the way of the coronavirus. For many, it already feels like an eternity.” Newspaper article by Nellie Bowles 26 March 2020

“Kids are trying to escape. Careers are falling apart as parents working from home become de facto kindergarten teachers. Marriages are being strained. Couples who wanted to break up are stuck together; Craigslist roommates are suddenly family. And everyone has to stay put with others 24 hours a day because there is nowhere else, really, to go….cabin fever is setting in.”

“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” David asked centuries ago in Psalm 11:3. What do you do when everything begins to be too much?

The choir room was packed with children in Christmas costumes ready to enter the church for the Christmas pageant. It was pandemonium. Exasperated at getting nowhere, the children’s choir director stood on a chair and literally screamed, “Shut up!” At which point silence fell and we filed into the sanctuary to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace. I’ll never forget it.    

It’s going to feel like pandemonium, like an eternity, like the foundation, the floor, being pulled out from under some of us before this is over. It’s both unfair and unrealistic to believe we are all supposed to ‘keep a stiff upper lip’ and carry on, business as usual. Some will feel like standing in the middle of the prolonged confinement and yelling something at it, anything, if in so doing everything can go back to normal. But normal has fled, never to return the same.   

When it begins to feel like an eternity, this confinement, turn it upside down - really right side up - and ask the Holy Spirit to help you sense the truth: in Jesus you already live in eternity. 

Reflective question: What plan do you have in place for times when cabin fever is closing in?

Reflective scripture: Matthew 11:28

“Come to me, all you who are wearied and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Reflective hymn: “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” (Isaac Watts 1674-1748)

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.

PRAYER REQUEST: click here to submit.