‘Covid-19: Johnson still working on 'roadmap' to ease lockdown’ was the recent headline in the nation’s news. For months, politicians, scientists, educators and business people have been among the countless number of people putting pressure on the Government to find a route out of lockdown and back to ‘normal life’. That is the desire of the majority of people in this country who have had enough of the restrictions and rules of lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation etc., which is why the news of successful vaccinations has been met with joyful euphoria in many areas.
The question has been asked for months, ‘When will life get back to normal?’ Almost every day, we have heard stories of death and disasters, of hardship and family difficulties, of financial and other health problems due to the pandemic. But what is normal? Was life before Covid-19 normal? Are we really content to accept all the evil, terrorism, conflict, family breakdown, marriage infidelity, abortion, abuse, addictions, climate change, violence, chaos, confusion, injustice and inequality, and say that is ‘normal’? I dare to declare that life before Covid-19 was anything but normal.
If we really want to know what is normal, we should go back to view the Maker’s Instructions
When something goes wrong with your car, your food mixer, your television or your health, you consult the experts, the manufacturers, and those skilled to give help and healing. So with life, with society, with personal morality, with social ethics; what was the Designer’s intention, how can we get back to how we should be? How do we get back to what our Creator designed to be normal?
But that is the crux of the problem ~ our secular, humanistic society is doing all it can to move people away from God’s good instructions for His world. We have deliberately ignored and disobeyed God ~ His standards, values, plans and purposes for the world which He so wonderfully created. We have settled for a life which is far from normal, but is hostile and alienated from how God intended us to live.
Man is so full of pride and selfish lawlessness that he endlessly tries to work out his own solutions to life’s problems. He refuses to cry out in humility and repentance to the Lord God Almighty, Who, in actual fact, is the only One Who can help us. When will humanity wake up and realise that without God’s help, we will steadily get more and more into danger, deeper and deeper into difficulty, increasingly entangled in the sinful web of deliberate disobedience, bringing God’s righteous judgement upon ourselves?
God has a plan for humanity and for each one of us individually, revealed to us in the Bible
When Israel was in deep trouble, locked down during the very difficult days of exile in Babylon, the Sovereign Lord spoke to His people through the prophet Jeremiah:
“‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity’”
Throughout His Word, the Bible, the Sovereign Lord God Almighty, our loving and gracious Heavenly Father, makes the same glorious promises, not just to His Chosen People, Israel, but to the whole of humanity. That leads to normal life as God intended ~ if we will humble ourselves and seek His ways.
But sadly, we read this: “‘They have not listened to My words,’ declares the Lord”
Whatever plans the Governments of this world come up with to try and get us out of lockdown and back to ‘normal life’, nothing man can do will ever bring us back to the wonderful ‘normal life’ that God plans for us, living in harmony with Him. Each one of us in responsible and accountable to God for how we respond to His loving and gracious promises to help us live that ‘normal life’ as He intended.
Are you looking for a ‘normal life’? Where are you putting your trust and hope?
Ron Brickman