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Now that the Corona virus is spreading and people are getting panicky, lots of decisions being made that are disrupting lots of people. Sorry for those of you who were looking forward to putting together your March Madness brackets, you’re all winners.
With that though, let’s talk this through. You are going to be dealing with some disruptions. That’s obvious. My son’s college, they have changed the class structure after Spring Break, they’ve extended Spring Break. I anticipate that some of that is going to happen even with the school district here. They have changed up the travel policy now for students within the school district. You’re seeing lots of events canceled, lots of those things.
We have choices when life gets disrupted. What are we going to do? Are we going to complain about it? Are we going to live in fear? What are we going to do? Here’s the thing that the Bible teaches. Don’t be anxious because tomorrow has enough worries of its own. Don’t worry about tomorrow’s worries today. And so what we have to do is trust in the Lord with our whole heart and lean not on our own understanding, but simply acknowledge that he’s already got a plan for your life, for the things that you’re going to be facing.
Nothing is by surprise or catches him off guard. And so that’s the first thing. You just need to pray about, “How should I be responding?” That’s been my prayer. “How can I be of a greater encouragement to the people around me when I see people obsessing and panicking and making really stupid decisions out of fear? How can I be an encouragement to them?”
At the same time though, look for some things that maybe with this disruption can really become a blessing that you didn’t expect. Maybe all those hours you were going to spend watching March Madness, maybe spend some time with your kids playing board games. Maybe spend some time just having conversations with those people closest to you.
Maybe it’s time to read some books and expand your own knowledge while you’ve got this downtime. Maybe you can take up some new projects around the house that been put off for a while. Part of what we have to look at is disruption sometimes re-center us. They’re a pattern interrupt, and what they do is they force us to step back and take a look at our priorities, take a look at how we spend our most valuable asset, our time, how we spend our money, how we are involved in relationships.
And so these are things that I want to encourage you. Spend these disruptive times evaluating, are there some things that you just need to make adjustments on? Is this an opportunity you’re getting to spend more time with your children, your grandchildren, people you care about? Take advantage of the disruption. Don’t get caught up in the hype. Don’t get caught up in the hysteria. Be smart. Have your plan, but use this to your advantage. This is a great time to talk about other difficult times.
Yesterday I had a friend over here at the house, and on our mantle we have a picture of toilet paper and toothpaste. At some point I’ll put that picture on here, but there’s a story behind it. 11 years ago, our family was going through some very difficult times. No food in the house, no toilet paper in my house, no toothpaste in the house, and it was one of the greatest lessons God ever taught us because we gathered in our living room, we prayed for what we needed, and two hours later, a friend showed up at the door with a box.
He had been cleaning out his mother-in-law’s refrigerator and thought we might need a few things ourselves, and in that box was toilet paper and a few food items and $20. And so we were able to go buy toothpaste, we were able to replenish our supplies a little bit, we were fed that night. We had everything we needed. We just simply had to trust God through that process. And that’s the encouragement I want to make to you. God will supply your needs. Now, maybe a little inconvenient, maybe a little uncomfortable at times, but he’s going to be faithful to see you through this process. So just a few thoughts for you today. I hope you have an amazing weekend
