Welcome to the Pastor’s Workshop on this Monday after Easter. To be truthful, I’m not in the workshop today (and most pastor’s aren’t on the workshop on the day after Easter). Holy Week is busy and today is a day of rest (so this was pre-written!).
We’re about to embark on a new series entitled “New Normal”. It’s a term that keeps cropping up as people think about what life will be like after the pandemic passes.
The basic question that arises, “What will determine our New Normal?” Will the Coronavirus and all its consequences be the major factor in what shapes life ahead?
Or will we remember that just yesterday we celebrated Easter. Just yesterday we rejoiced in the Resurrection of Jesus. We praised God that we live in a world with a Risen Savior who is calling us into a Risen life. The condition of our human mortality is now embraced by Resurrection reality.
Our series “New Normal” will reflect on that Resurrection reality. It will invite us to integrate that Easter faith into practical choices we make during this time of “sheltering in place”.
The Scripture we will be working with this week is a short, two verses. It’s I Timothy 4:7-8. As the older apostle writes to his younger protégé he’s encouraging him to keep the faith and “train yourself in godliness”.
“Training” ourselves in godliness is a worthwhile, healthy focus. It invites us to deliberately examine how we “do” life during these days. It calls us to decide for God’s best in our choices. It challenges us to look at how we make one decision at a time and take one step at a time for our holistic health.
As we train in godliness the Apostle says it has positive consequences. The quote of this Scripture, training in godliness holds “promise for both the present life and the life to come”.
I look forward to this series. I hope it will provide a focus for us as we move through these next weeks of sheltering in place. I pray that it will help all of us build blessings of God’s best into our lives.
I pray that it as we train ourselves in godliness, the reality of resurrection would be the determining factor in our “New Normal”.
In that blessing I look forward to what is ahead in this Sunday’s message and in this new series.
Prayer: Gracious God, we praise you as the God of Resurrection. We rejoice that Jesus Christ arose from the dead and is our Risen and Living Lord. We thank you that you call us into Risen Life. Be with us in these days in a way that we would make deliberate and practical choices to build up our lives in you. As we train ourselves in godliness let us be built up in your grace, all to your glory! In Jesus name we pray.