GPBC Blog

By Stephanie Ramella--

I have been reflecting this past week (as I’m sure many of you have) on the fact that it’s now been exactly one year since the pandemic began. I’ve been struck this year as I talk to people who aren’t followers of Jesus and their perspective on everything that has happened. Most people see this year as an immense loss, a complete waste of time, and something that they could not wait to get through and get back to “normal life." While the losses, great and small, of the past year cannot be overstated, I think of how we are prodded by the Spirit of God to see things in a different light, and are reminded that the presence of God draws near in the still and quiet place when not much seems to be happening. Many times it takes the quiet for us to perceive the areas he wants to work more deeply in.

Something that has challenged me deeply this past year is coming back to thinking about suffering in the context of God’s main aim for us as his people: is it making me more into the person of love that God wants me to be, than I was before? In measuring the past year by that standard, it becomes not an immense waste, but in immense opportunity to allow God to make us more into his image, filled with his love and open to his work in us, than we were one year ago. This doesn’t happen by default, though, of course. It’s not a guarantee that suffering will make me more loving; however, God invites us daily to let Him do something in us through our suffering. My prayer is that I say yes to that invitation every day. May we be more open to him, and, welcome the things we don’t wish we were welcoming so that we may have a more worthwhile gain: being made more into the likeness of our God who is love, than we were before.

As James says, “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” May you welcome these annoyances, distractions and roadblocks of the past year and this season so that the “resilience-building" (perseverance) may finish its work in you, so that you may be, as The Message translates it, “not deficient in any way."