Crossing through

Following the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples lived in an in-between time.  A time they didn’t choose.  They had no choice but to come to terms with what they had lost.  Initially, they hid, and some of them tried to return to their lives before Jesus.  It seems that at some point, they came to the realization there was no going back.  They accepted that their lived experiences of Jesus, including His death, and resurrection had transformed them.  They no longer fit the paradigm of the world they knew before Jesus.  The only way out of the in-between time was to go forward.  I imagine this decision involved many conversations and many questions such as: "Can we return to our old lives?"  "If we don’t go back, how do we go forward?"  "This is all new, uncharted territory, how can we decide, now that our Master is gone?"  "Remember, Jesus told us we would be hated and persecuted (John 15:18-21).  If the world hates and persecutes us, can we succeed?"

We can put our faith and our trust in God and keep moving forward.  In a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Timothy relied on the Holy Spirit to guide their teaching and missionary travels.  By trusting God and choosing to do the work God has in mind, "The churches grew stronger in faith and increased in number." (Acts 16:1-10)

The Acts of Apostles and the lives of the saints are filled with stories of triumphs and setbacks.  It sometimes feels like it’s constantly, ‘three steps forward, two steps back.’  But Paul and Timothy gave us an insight into how to proceed when we feel life (or a virus) gets in our way.  It’s so simple we might even miss it: “So they crossed through.” (Acts 16:8)

We must remember that we’re a pilgrim people.  We’re on the way to our Father’s house.  We have with us the Spirit of God and Jesus has gone before us.  Elsewhere in the Acts it says, “So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.”  (Acts 5:41)

Now, like the early disciples, we are in an in-between time, a place we didn’t choose to go.  COVID-19 has inflicted excruciating physical, mental, and emotional pain on many people, and continues to do so.  At the same time, life has slowed down, allowing time for transformation.  We can’t go back to who we were pre-pandemic.  We have no choice but to come to terms with our situation.  However, we do have the freedom to choose how we integrate these experiences and who we become.