Home. They don’t call it sweet for nothing. It has all the warm feels. There’s no place like it! I have always said one of my favorite things to do is to stay home. So, you know how they say, “Be careful what you wish for…you just might get it?” I think we’re there.
In these crazy, unprecedented days of executive orders, I have to be honest, the staying home part is not that hard for me. The hard part is not being with people!! We are so used to being together with our families, our friends, our church family, and our neighbors….We’re used to greeting each other with hugs and handshakes. We’re used to picking up our grandchildren for kisses and snuggling up to read stories.
But in the last 2 months, things have changed and we have to find new rhythms, (as Pastor Tom would say.) We need to have a new normal, and a new structure in our days. So, I decided to follow Pastor Tom’s challenge to pick one of the gospels and read it through. I chose Matthew and I’m about halfway through it. I recently found one of my old Bibles that I used during high school and college. I am using it for this reading of Matthew, partly because the format is easy to read, and it’s large print! But also because it’s fun to read all the notes in the margins.
Staying home isn’t so bad. There is more time to read, for one thing. As I go through the gospel of Matthew, I am rereading the Beatitudes we just studied as a church family. I reread the parables of Jesus that we just learned in my Pre-K Children’s Worship class. I’m reading about the many miracles Jesus performed of healing, casting out demons, raising the dead, and calming the storm.
It seems that we could all use a big, gigantic miracle about now. I have a feeling that there are miracles happening all over the world, and some day soon we will begin hearing about them. Our preschoolers love to sing the song, “My God is SO BIG, so strong and so mighty there’s nothing my God cannot do!” Let’s hold that song in our hearts and minds as we live through one day at a time, at home or wherever we are. Our God has us all in His hands.
Trudy