THRIVING NOT JUST SURVIVING

How are you surviving during these difficult times? Are you thriving or just enduring? I must admit that it has been challenging for me. Watching the news can be terribly discouraging so I have to limit my viewing. The different news channels can brainwash you according to their biases. I read national blogs and podcasts to keep me current, and take three newspapers and a news magazine to inform me. I try to discipline myself to a daily schedule to balance my life. Let me share what I am doing to thrive and not merely survive.

I take an hour each morning to read the Scriptures and other devotional books. I find that the Psalms keep me honest as they run the gamut of praise, petition, lamentation, frustration, thanksgiving and despair. All of life is taken to the Lord for comfort, strength, affirmation, repentance and hope. God is seen to be over all, in control of life and death, wise beyond our human knowledge, and an ever present help in trouble. Each day I write in my journal my reflections on the day before and my prayer requests and insights from my meditations.

After breakfast and a glance at the news I go for a walk, to stretch my legs and enjoy the beauty of nature. I often encounter neighbors and we stop to exchange greetings and enquire of one another’s wellbeing. We have an interesting street with four investment brokers, a retired military man, a couple of engineers, a dentist and four students in high school and college. There is always plenty to talk about.

After exercise I settle down at my computer and work on my current project, which is writing a book on the theology of my mentor, John Stott. I have completed most of the research, which consisted of my reading everything he wrote and contributed to – over fifty publications. I am making progress, having written 22,000 words and am on my fifth chapter. After several hours I take a break for a late lunch, and then go for my second walk of the day.

Antoinette and I check in with one another at various times of the day. We share our reading, discuss current issues, catch up with family news and make plans. We then run errands, go to the grocery store and do household chores. In the evening after watching the news I settle down to read. My current book is No Surrender by Chris Edmonds, which is the story of his father and his mates in the Battle of the Bulge, being captured and their life in POW camp in Germany. It is a story of endurance, courage and hardship that puts our current pandemic in perspective. I am thankful that I have not been put to the test that these men had to face.

I am also reading Dante’s, Divine Comedy, the journey of the soul through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. It can be read on several levels: allegorically, historically, and spiritually. Written in the early 14^th century it is a commentary on life in the Italian city states where feuds between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Popes and their surrogates caused mayhem in their societies where murders and military conflicts resulted in expulsions, excommunications and exile of those on the losing sides. It puts into perspective the partisan conflict in our politics. It would be like the major cities of the United States being independent and various factions vying for power and control over the surrounding countryside. We have seen some of that in the ways the governors of various states and the leaders of nations have exercised their executive powers to compel their citizens to observe their mandates. Fortunately we have enabled competing visions and policies to be pursued peacefully rather than having to go to war. Human nature has not changed. We are still prone to blame others for the difficulties we experience instead of looking inside ourselves at our pride, our failings, and our indifference to our Creator and Savior.

If we are to thrive, and not just survive in these times, we need to humble ourselves under the hand of Almighty God, seek his face and be obedient to his direction in our lives. We need a broken and a contrite spirit like that of King David in Psalm 51. “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” We need to identify the meaning and purpose of our lives as being more than survival, more than avoiding infection, more than living longer, more than fearing death, but rather living to the glory of God: loving God with all our heart, mind and soul, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. I wrote in my journal this morning words from a prayer I read: “Until I finish my course with joy, may I pursue it with diligence.” I want to thrive not just survive.

In a profile by Alexandra Wolfe of Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship of Newport Beach, California ,in this weekend Wall Street Journal, he urges us to “to bring Christ into your crisis, and turn your fear into faith, turn your worry into worship, turn your panic into prayer.”