“New Normal”. How many times have you heard those two words during the pandemic? A hundred times? More? How about this one? “Nothing will be the same.” Both of the those expressions speak to movement. Let me explain. “New normal” implies a leaving of an old normal. “Nothing will be the same” implies that something new will replace it.
I’m like you. We all have a proclivity for stability…sameness. All of us have a gravitational pull toward the status quo. There is nothing wrong with stability. But let me suggest something. Throughout the history recorded in the bible, many times God had to “shake things up” to get His people out of their state of complacency.
One great example is found in the book of Acts. God clearly lays out an outreach strategy in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” But the early church did nothing to move out of the safety and stability of Jerusalem. It wasn’t until severe persecution came upon the church in Jerusalem, that the Christians moved from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and eventually to the ends of the earth. For those early Christians, there was a “new normal” and your faith and mine was possible because the situation had changed and they moved to spread the message of the Gospel.
I don’t like our “new normal.” In fact, none of us are sure what it’s going to look like. But we might consider that change for the sake of the Gospel might just be what God allows in our lives to move us, change us, grow us. God never wastes a pandemic. He may be using it to move you from your Jerusalem to the place He wants you to be.