Not gonna lie: this virus and its impact rots. The effect on our lives, the world, an unknown future, friendships/relationships, is still breathtaking six months later. The general fatigue we carry as a culture is palatable. I can have big feelings I don’t always let others see and definitely refuse, more often than not, to name. It’s probably why when I read this verse, I took a deep breath.
When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
Psalm 94:18-19
your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought me joy.
So much in this. For starters, I don’t have to pretend my foot isn’t slipping?! What a relief, because sometimes, it does. This world and all its craziness is tough to keep sure-footed in all the time. Most days I am walking just fine, but I can receive a phone call, or a piece of news that disappoints me, and my foot can slip. What? The game/trip/conference/class is cancelled? I take great comfort in knowing I can tell the Lord about it and not be anything other than real with Him.
His love is unfailing. He isn’t busy with someone else, He isn’t tired of supporting me. He is, by choice, my Father, and He wants to catch me before I fall. I think about our own children and how much I am watching to see when I need to put my arm out to catch them. Is that how God feels about me? How wildly comforting to know He’s on alert like that.
Let’s just say it: anxiety is a reality in this season. I don’t know about the kids’ schooling, the future of travel, the economic outlook, the possibility of getting sick… I don’t know if the virus will impact our parents. I could get worked up if I sat in the questions and uncertainty of it all. What starts out like an annoying pebble in my shoe can swell to be great within me. It’s just natural. Feeling out of control and not liking what’s happening forces us to either feel stuck and anxious, or do a spiritual workaround, remembering what is true and Who is with us.
“Your consolation brought me joy,” says the psalmist. JOY!? The aftermath of anxiety doesn’t have to be exhaustion? Or shame over my doubt? Or fear? I can have joy because You met me? Care about me? Filled me? When we remember the plumb line, the sovereign truths that don’t change with time or circumstances, then we have joy – unspeakable, unbreakable joy, like water that that is soft but unbreakable. Some time people think that there are weather king manuals so that they can predict a bit of future, but only thing it’s important is that he is with us, He is for us, He will never forsake us. That is the handle I need for sure footing on any given day when walking over the hot coals of what we commonly call, the Coronavirus.