A deeply difficult year
None of us knew what this Covid-19 virus would bring to our doorsteps. For many of us it has been a year of grief. Sadly, I have conducted over 30 funerals during the past 12 months. Many of them in the worst possible circumstances where the accepted norm of being with people at the end of their lives and the usual formalities around funerals were taken away from us. Pandemics are evil. Cancer is evil. Murder on the streets of Myanmar is evil.
Civil wars in the Yemen and Syria are evil
There’s one big question lurking at the back of our minds - “what has all this been for?” Maybe you’ve heard some dire warnings about the churches going under after this year. Other people, on the other hand, are very hopeful that God is doing something new and exciting.
God’s roadmap to recovery
The true road map to recovery and reopening our lives starts with Jesus. The Bible invites all of us to believe in the coming of a great reversal. From beginning to end the Bible is crammed full of stories of U-turns in peoples’ lives. Abraham and Sarah were old and barren one day, then full of joy and parents the next day. The Red Sea was uncrossable one minute and a pathway the next. And my favourite story of them all – one night Joseph went to sleep as an Egyptian prisoner, the next night he went to sleep as the Prime Minister of Egypt. Do you get a sense of the rhythm to all this?
In God’s hands no script is predictable, no outcome is inevitable.
Look into the Bethlehem stable – who saw him coming?
God sleeping in a manger.
God weeping at a graveside.
God dying on a cross.
God rising from the tomb!
God ascending back into heaven.
God weaving things for good
The story of Joseph is one of my all-time favourites in the Bible. I love the understated simplicity of Genesis 50:20. In fact, it might be described as one of the greatest understatements of all time. Joseph has just revealed his true identity to his brothers who had treated him with such treachery and hatred and sold him into a life of misery in prison. This is a moment of deep reconciliation and deepest needs being met. These are amazing, grace-filled words of forgiveness and healing coming from the lips of Joseph, "you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done.” The sheer magnitude of what is actually happening in these eighteen words absolutely blows me away. They are words of epic forgiveness. Another way to translate the Hebrew word translated by the NIV as ‘intended’ which occurs twice in this verse, is using the words ‘weave’ or ‘braid’. And that little conjunction word ‘but’ right in the middle of this sentence is a real game changer. “As for you, you intended evil against me but God was weaving it for good!”
Master weaver at work
What has this last year been for? Has God been weaving us together for good? God weaving this vicious virus into our lives for our good and for his glory? Is that taking these horrendous circumstances we’ve all lived through a step too far? Can we say that in all honesty? Think about this in the context of the broader year and what God wants to do with us. Could this not be God at it again if the rhythm of his past performance over thousands of years is anything to go by?
The master weaver at work on the tapestry of our lives weaving the miracle of his great reversal. Dare I even suggest that according to Genesis 50:20, God will weave a thread of glory through all the suffering and loss of this time of Covid-19 shutdown with all its isolation and anxiety? Isn’t this the Good Friday God who master-minded the greatest reversal of all time and weaves a golden thread of redemption from Genesis to Revelation? He is capable of doing such a thing and more.
The God of great reversals
It is Easter, we have been celebrating the greatest reversal of all time, the monumental U-turn of death to life, darkness to light, seeming defeat to earth shattering victory. It occurred in a cemetery just outside of Jerusalem when Jesus, who had been three days dead in a borrowed tomb, stood up again and broke the power of sin and death forevermore. Let the truth of Romans 8:3-4 touch your heart; “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit.”
On the day we call Good Friday, the darkest day in history when everything looked as though it had gone pear shaped, when all hopes and dreams seemed to be shattered and evil had done it’s worst, God was bringing about the greatest reversal of all time. So, we can sing our Easter anthem “Death is dead, love has won, Christ had conquered.”
Deepest needs met
The Bible tells us that the true road map to recovery and the reopening of our lives starts with the renewal of our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savour and Lord. The struggles have pilfered life from us and we are feeling exhausted. As we deal with the shattered dreams and disappointments of life, we must not allow the middle of the story pull us down. Take fresh hope in how faith in the risen Jesus enables us to know God speaking to our deepest needs in life.
Rev Daniel Kane is minister of West Church congregation in Ballymena.
You can access more Easter blogs and resources here.