Leadership Praise – Psalm 145: Recovering Goodness
If we aren’t careful, goodness can easily be distorted into a short moral checklist. Depending on our cultural context and political persuasion, the checklists may differ. Still, we each have one. And, it’s easy to confuse our list with what it means to be “good.” Today’s psalm helps us to recover a biblical understanding of goodness. It does so, not by talking about goodness as an idea, but by describing the ways in which God is good.
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Leadership Praise – Psalm 145: Reimagining Greatness
One of the dangers of great leadership responsibility is that we live in our own echo chamber. Many around us, sometimes out of deference and respect, tell us how great we are, and are reluctant to point out our limitations or weaknesses. Learning to cultivate a healthy awe for God’s greatness is a helpful antidote to a preoccupation with our own.
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Easter and COVID-19:
Nothing Can Take Away God’s Love from You
I have no doubt that sometimes Christians have spoken of God’s love in ways that are naïve and simplistic. I know I’ve done so at times. Maybe you have too. But, let’s be clear, the Apostle Paul was not one of these Christians. He knew all about suffering.
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Easter and COVID-19:
God Is On Your Side
That God is for us is surely one of the most encouraging truths we can imagine. But the idea that God is at work for us doesn’t mean we simply sit around and watch.
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Easter and COVID-19:
God Works in All Things for Good
Things and circumstances aren’t magic. The broken world isn’t set up so that good always prevails in this age. But God is at work in and through all things. And God is able to work in them for his ultimate good. The same God who was able to work through the horrors of the crucifixion, the same God who defeated death through the resurrection of Jesus, this God can and will work in all things for good.
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Easter and COVID-19:
God’s Help and God’s Groaning
As the world suffers from the impact of the coronavirus, creation groans. And so do the millions whose lives are imperiled by the virus. We groan in fear, pain, and loss. We groan in frustration, loneliness, and anger. A dear friend of mine recently lost one of his close friends to COVID-19. When he learned of his friend’s passing, my friend groaned, filled with mourning. Yes—in his note to me he actually said he “groaned.” Yet, he did not groan alone. God was with him, helping him by groaning with him, through him, and for him.
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Easter and COVID-19:
Glorious Hope
Our hope is not based on our ability to foresee the future. It’s not based on us at all. Rather, it is based on who God is and what God has done through Jesus Christ. It rests on the solid foundation of the resurrection of Jesus.
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Abiding in Love
May you be deeply rooted in the soil of God’s love and may you be held and upheld, sustained by the source. May the soul of your leadership grow a thick and deep root in the soil of God’s own love. My hope is to remind you to stay connected to the soil of God’s own love for you and your community. Abide in this love today. The harvest of this abiding will come tomorrow. There’s nothing more that you need to produce today. The vine invites you to be present today. Be present to yourself, to God, and to others. I am in this struggle with you. You are not alone.
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A Leader Laments
As a leader, I must acknowledge my human limitations and release any subtle grasp for control in this crisis. Words have often failed me in the last four weeks. The first thing I’ve had to learn to do as a leader is to lament as needed. To identify and name my losses is the first step in the grief process.; to not run quickly to Easter Sunday but sit with the grief of the Garden of Gethsemane: my own and others’ grief. We serve a leader and a Savior that is well acquainted with the grief of both garden and Good Friday.
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Easter and COVID-19:
A World of Groaning
This pandemic reminds us vividly of the fact that our world is not what it should be. As the novel coronavirus stalks our planet, creation is groaning. And we are groaning along with it (Romans 8:25).
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Easter and COVID-19:
The Life-Giving Spirit
How does this verse speak to us in the midst of the coronavirus crisis? First, it offers the promise of life beyond this life. In a time when we are more aware than usual of our mortality, when we are reminded of the fact that we will die, it’s reassuring to know that physical death is not the end for us. We will be raised into the life of the age to come, when disease and death are no more.
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Easter and COVID-19:
Relying on God Who Raises the Dead
When things are going well in life, when the notion of a pandemic doesn’t even enter our minds, when the economy is strong, when our work is flourishing, it can be easy for us to rely on ourselves. This is especially true for those of us who are leaders. We’re used to being consistently reliable. But, when bad things happen to us and those we love, when we are threatened by a powerful disease, or when the world’s economy falters, or when we wonder about our own financial security, then we, like Paul, realize just how much we need God. Self-reliance seems naïve and unwise.
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Easter and COVID-19:
Glorious Joy, Even Now?
In the midst of such a hard time, however, those to whom Peter wrote had hope. But not just hope for the future. They also rejoiced in the present “with an indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8). Notice that this does not say “you will rejoice someday” but you “are rejoicing now.” In other words, they were joyful in the midst of suffering.
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Easter and COVID-19:
What Difference Does the Resurrection Make?
The COVID-19 crisis certainly will make a difference in our Easter celebrations, won’t it? But, I wonder, will the difference also go in the other direction as well? To put it simply, I wonder if Easter will make a difference in how we think about, feel about, and experience life during a pandemic.
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Christ is Risen! Really!
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! For centuries, Christians have used this so called “Paschal Greeting” on Easter morning and throughout the fifty-day season of Easter. It originated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, but now Christians in many traditions have adopted the practice of greeting one another in this distinctive way, thus celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.
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