A Screeching Halt

 

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

That is what so many are experiencing in the last few days. One day, we were speculating about possibilities and anticipating a measured response to a heath threat. Suddenly, we are slapped in the face with a darker reality and danger. Much more than we expected is changed.

All of our plans and our lifestyle have come to a screeching halt.

The words of James come to mind:

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. - James 4:14-16

It shakes our delusional illusions to any control we have over the world or of our own destinies. It rattles our confidence. It disturbs our delicate balance. It stops us in our tracks.

The world is a sometimes fragile, often unpredictable, frequently chaotic house to live in. We do not live invincibly in fortresses that cannot be penetrated by the forces of nature ... especially things as tiny as germs that can turn human society upside down in a short geometric progression of time.

I set urgent goals, make urgent plans, play urgent roles,
Pray urgent prayers, seek urgent interventions for my urgent cares.
God quietly, silently, patiently hears my cries, my fears, my sobbing tears.
God speaks and cage-rattles as silently and patiently to my rage- battles.
And urgency gives way to intentionality ....
And rush to order ...
And I step into a different time-line where all that was slow
Is fast
And all that was fast
Is slow
And everything
Is right on time.

So, when we cannot think of anything else and, when we realize that there is nothing better to think of, we pray.

"Hear my prayer, O LORD;
give ear to my pleas for mercy!
In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!"- Psalm 143:1 (ESV)

Then, after the halt, the rallying cry comes, "Begin again."

And we begin again.