It’s not quite shaping up to be the 2020 we thought it would be, right? I’m sure you’ve all seen the memes that talk about “unplugging” 2020 and rebooting it…

Well, these are definitely strange days we are living in! Our plans are cancelled, our schedules went out the door and maybe, like me, your tears and emotions are flowing a little more than usual. (TMI here… my emotions are EXTRA, EXTRA right now because I’m walking through menopause during this Covid 19 lockdown… funny sense of humor God has… ;)

But no matter how you look at things, this Coronavirus outbreak has changed our world and it’s brought it all the way down to our every day moments… and I can’t stop thinking of the “BIG PICTURE” here. Every day I write down things I feel the Lord is telling me and it seems like every morning I wake up with a dream, or a song or something the Lord is showing me. There is a sense of ETERNITY in my days, and I wonder if you feel it too?

I woke up this morning with a sense of clarity; that though this is certainly a huge trial right now for the entire globe, I felt like God was saying He is so close, so present in this trial. I also got a sense that He is watching His flock, and in a way this is a time where He is looking at us and seeing what we are doing IN this trial.

For some reason, what comes to my mind right now is Solomon’s quest for the meaning of life in the book of Ecclesiastes. In the beginning of the book he questions the existence of God and is searching for meaning in his life. Solomon wonders if life is just all “Vanity of vanities?” futility, useless… a vapor of nothingness. He had it ALL, and I mean all: money, power, possessions, etc… and yet he knows in his heart of hearts there is more to life and he is looking for answers. His father David told him to “walk with God” and even God visited him in a dream and blessed Solomon in many ways. But Solomon took his eyes off God and let the world become more important. Even though he loved God, he turned from Him, as he let the people in his life lead him astray with the desires of the flesh and the world. It’s a sad story, but isn’t this the story of life we see lived out over and over to this current day? For Solomon, when you get to the last chapter in Ecclesiastes, you see that He came back to God and remembered what God had done in his life. Remembered what his father David told him to do and finally realized that “vanity of vanities” WAS the worldly pursuits he had spent way too much time of his life on! He saw that what mattered in life WAS God and everything in life that DID matter had to do WITH God! Sure he understood deeply, by his own mistakes, that we can all choose to live according to our own heart and desires… he lived that and saw it all as vanity… but ultimately he realized that living our lives for God is ultimatley what was GOOD and will be blessed and rewarded.

There are a few things I’ve learned from Solomon that I think we can take to heart right now in the days we are living in.

If you want, get out a journal and write down your thoughts as you go through these questions I’ve shared below:

1. We ALL wonder about the meaning of life. This is THE universal question and I truly believe it’s born in us from God, that we would seek and find Him. A “God shaped hole” in our hearts that is only filled by having a relationship with God, a life filled with faith. Right now we are all at home with LOTS of time. Why not ponder this question if you haven’t settled on the answer yet? Read Romans 1:19-20, Acts 17:22-34 & Psalm 8 and ask God to show you personally the answer to this question.

2. Did God reveal himself to Solomon? Yes, and in that I believe He also tested Solomon to see what he would do. I believe the current situation we are in is also being used as a test, just like with Solomon, to see what we are going to do. I know that may seem like strong words, but I do believe that as a Christian, God is looking at me, and you, to see how we are going to respond to Covid 19. How we, as Christ followers, are honoring God, walking out our faith, being the hands and feet of God and sharing His love in a dark world. How are we doing this? What are we spending our time doing while we are at home? Are we using this time to glorify Him or wasting this time in mindless nonsense? Friends, God wants to reveal Himself to us, through the work of the Holy Spirit! Now, more than ever, let’s pray for the Holy Spirit’s guiding, comforting voice to direct our days.

3. Was God pleased with Solomon? Yes and No. Yes, God was pleased that Solomon asked Him for understanding between good and evil and how to govern His people. But God knew that Solomons heart drifted away from Him and was not fully focused on Him, and that in turn brought about a time of broken fellowship with God and consequences that followed. Solomon drifted away from God because of the people that came into his life, the things that took control over him and distracted him away from God. I think we can see that we please God when we obey Him and trust and follow His will for our lives. When we’re distracted and things take us away from where we should be, we aren’t living in a right relationship with God, just like in Solomon’s life. I see so clearly now that our world in 2020 BEFORE Covid 19 was SO distracting; so caught up in busyness, planning, schedules, one thing to the next… time spent on self. I can’t imagine that pleased God. And now here we are… Sitting at home and I feel like God is trying to get our attention! Are we going to listen? Are we going to take this time as a GIANT message from God to RESET the focus of our lives? I encourage you to take the next 10 minutes right now and just LISTEN. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to speak. Write down what God is telling you.

4. Did God bless Solomon? Yes, in many ways. And for a time, Solomon gave God the glory for it. God will bless this time if we focus on Him and what He wants us to do right now. Share with others what God is showing you. Use this time at home to honor God and tell others about Him! Look at this time AS a blessing. I’m not trivializing this virus or what it is doing to the lives of many people around the world. Stay home, stay healthy and do all the wise things our Governments are telling us to do! But spiritually speaking, when life gets back to normal… don’t let it! Don’t go back to the distractions or schedules overtaking our lives. Think with a fresh perspective… think about what THIS life is meant for… and what ETERNITY means to you. Read II Corinthians 4:16-18. “Remember now your Creator” as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 12:1. How can this time at home be redeemed for His Purposes?

   
   

   Friends, I want you to know that when I write these blog posts I ask the Holy Spirit to speak, so this is speaking to my own heart as I write this, just as much as it may be to yours. Let’s not loose the blessings of God because of our disobedience during this time. Let’s keep focused on the Lord and remember this time as a pivotal moment in our lives where we re-focused EVERYTHING back to God!

I’ll leave you with a story from the Enduring Word commentary:

In the 1930s an Australian alcoholic named Arthur Stace was converted and heard an inspiring sermon on the subject of eternity. The preacher said, “I wish I could shout ETERNITY through all the streets of Sydney!” Stace was so moved that as he left the church he felt an immediate urge to write the word Eternity; he had a piece of chalk in his pocket and bent down and wrote on the pavement. Stace was hardly literate and could barely write his own name legibly; but when he wrote Eternity, he did so in elegant copperplate style script, usually about 2 feet wide on the pavement. He spent the rest of his life – until 1967 – waking each day at about 5:30, praying for an hour or so, then going around Sydney where he felt God led him to write Eternity all over the city. Solomon would have approved of both Arthur Stace and his message: Eternity.

Everything and every moment has meaning to God. Let’s use these days of 2020 to bring about a change in our own hearts and a revival in this world that has ETERNAL SIGNIFICANCE!

Hugs to all,

Laura McCollough