“Despite the change of the calendar, I suspect it will feel like little has changed. A vaccine for COVID-19 is available…”
That’s what I wrote in January 2021. I thought about just copying the whole article and using it again. What’s changed? How has God been working?
It feels a bit like one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day. Bill Murray stars as a weatherman who is assigned to cover the Feb 2 events in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania when the groundhog is pulled out to forecast if the winter will be long or short. Murray is trapped repeating the same day over and over again, through comedy and tragedy. 2021 started with COVID fears and restrictions and the promise of a vaccine. 2021 started with political, social and cultural divisions exploding into ugly fights between family, friends, and even strangers. We pray over and over for God to help guide us out of this pandemic and our cultural divisions, but where’s God working? We’re living the same thing over again.
Maybe. Like anyone, Christians are also prone to become depressed or disillusioned. We pray and may lose heart when we don’t see God at work.
But maybe we’re not repeating last year. One of the problems with humanity is we have trouble seeing ourselves and the world clearly, especially when stressed and emotional. We tend to forget the past and overreact to the present. Are we focusing on the wrong things? Are we missing where God is working?
Look in the manger with me. Look at the Christ child behind the inn. In the middle of Roman occupation, social strife between groups trying to reform Jewish society, would you have looked for God working in a peasant family from Nazareth? Would you have expected kings to tremble at this baby or wise men to leave their homes? We fail to see where God is working because God is at work hidden in the world. What the world overlooks and calls weak—those are the places where God has worked in the past and likely where God is working now.
At the end of Groundhog Day, Andie McDowell’s character loved the unloveable weatherman. It was this caring that ended Bill Murray’s endless day and started a new one.
It is God’s love in Christ, even to death on the cross, that ends what seemed like the endless history of human selfishness and Sin. It is resurrection with Christ that gives us confidence about a new year coming. Will we see it? The manger is our guide in between: we see God working, loving, leading, in places and relationships where there is weakness. Look for the love, look for the forgiveness that breaks the cycles of anger and hurt. There, I suspect, you’ll find God at work.
Looking for God's love in all the unlikely places,
Pastor Peter
