2020’s Painful ‘Revelation’ Can Become Hopeful Opportunity for 2021

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Surge Summary: For some people, 2020 wasn’t nearly as awful as one might expect. For others, it turned out to be, indeed, a time of great heartache. In any case, the year tore down the confidence many have placed in unreliable sources of security. Will 2021 turn their attention to the only place true security can be found?

Looking back over the incendiary, often exacting year of 2020, columnist Peter Heck, unexpectedly, considers first the benefits he and his family experienced:

For me personally? It’s been an amazing year. The unexpected lockdown last spring brought my family closer than ever.

• I’ve been able to engage in a far more intentional way in the spiritual discipleship of my own children than I would have under “normal” circumstances;

• My wife and I have had fuller and deeper conversations, spending more quality time together than we had the previous 13 years of marriage;

• We’ve been spared the grief of losing any close family members to COVID-19 or to any other cause;

• We’ve avoided debt;

• We’ve done more nightly “MadLibs,” evening board games, and family MarioKart tournaments than I’d have ever guessed at this time last year.

Heck is not insensible to the ugly fact that multitudes don’t have the same perspective.  They’ve instead suffered tremendous loss over the course of the past twelve months: Political commentator Marc Lamont Hill, for instance, closed 2020 losing both father and sister over the course of two days.

Inconceivable.

“And for every person who would identify with my experiences in 2020,” concedes Heck, “there is another who would identify with Hill’s, and there would be millions of others somewhere in between. So it’s a tall order to pick one word for all humanity. But if I had to try, I’d go with “revelation.”?

Heck elaborates:

On a personal level, has there ever been a year that has revealed to us individually where our confidence and hope is truly placed?

• If your hope has been placed in some false feeling of health invincibility, it was undoubtedly shaken in a year of shelter-in-place pandemic panic.
• If your hope has been placed in a youthful sense of immortality, it was surely undermined with the gut-wrenching news of that California helicopter crash that took Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and so many other young, gifted lives so suddenly.
• If your hope has been placed in your checking or savings account, it was unquestionably tested by a year of global economic arrest, cratering stocks, skyrocketing unemployment, and uncertain investment futures.
• If your hope has been placed in political power and the elected officials who wield it, that has definitely been exposed as unreliable and tenuous in a year as contentious and rancorous as this.
• If your hope has been placed in family and the comforts and security of home, that has surely been rattled by lockdowns, isolation, and social distancing.
• If your hope has been in routine and your personal view of normalcy, that has been rocked to its core in a year of race riots, “essential” businesses, and mask mandates.

If nothing else, we can say with certainty that this was a year where our idols were torched, our weaknesses exposed, our limitations and insecurities revealed. What a gift.

We reside in a fallen world, but the blessings of liberty and prosperity that surround us too often numb our consciences to how fragile we are, how unpredictable life is, and how everything – literally everything – can change in a moment. Except one thing.

God’s providence, His dominion, His unfathomable love, His unmerited grace is and remains the same, always; the only constant in a world of pandemics, pain, politics, and power plays.

And regarding the new year? The writer holds out a measure of hope:

“So, it makes me think – if 2020 was the year God revealed how feeble and futile all of humanity’s idols are, perhaps 2021 should be the year when Christ’s church presents in boldness how He is the only thing that isn’t, yesterday, today, and for all eternity.”

Lord, make it so!

The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge

H/T Disrn

Image: CC0 Public Domain; Adapted from: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1548633