Remembering that God is in charge

 This past year has been a struggle for nearly everyone. We knew there was a world-wide pandemic that was costing millions of lives, but we also kept hearing conflicting messages on how to address it. Do we wear masks, or are they not effective? Should we stay three feet apart, six feet apart or stay home completely? In what ways can it be transmitted? We've seen tens of thousands of people put out of work as businesses shut down, and many of those businesses will never reopen. Today, as things have opened up a little we find that we have shortages on many of the things we've come to expect. Supermarkets cannot keep their shelves stocked. Car manufacturers cannot get the components they need to build cars fast enough. Stimulus packages are passed by Congress to supposedly to assist people struggling financially, but much of the money in these packages are not going to individuals but to pet projects of members of Congress.

Of course, Covid is not the only problem facing us. In some parts of the country protesters continue to wreck havoc in major cities. Police are resigning in mass due to budget cuts and their sense of not being appreciated for the work they do. Mass shootings continue to occur in some of the major cities. We have a crisis at the border as people continue to enter the country illegally. Fuel prices are rising at a rate faster than anyone expected which is driving up the cost of many products we use every day.

I could continue, but I've painted a dark enough picture of what's happening in our nation. Those elected to positions of leadership are powerless to do anything about these problems, and in fact, caused some of them. But, we are not a nation without hope.

The thing we must remind ourselves is that God continues to be in charge. One might ask if He is in charge why are so many bad things occurring in our world and nation. That would be a fair question, and the answer is that He is working out His purposes in all these things. Perhaps His purpose is to show us what a world looks like that has turned its back on Him, and America has certainly done that over the past decades. Maybe He has allowed all these things to cause us to repent and turn back to Him.

As painful as these past months have been, as believers we can trust that God remains firmly in control of our world. 2 Chronicles 7: 14 tells the church that our responsibility is to pray, seek God's face and repent of our sins, and then He will heal our land. Believe me, our government is powerless to fix our problems. Technology cannot solve it nor can science. Only God can bring healing to our land, and the church can begin to set that healing into motion by following the passage above.

At church yesterday our special music reminded us that we need Jesus every hour. That reminder is always timely, but it seemed especially so in light of the challenges we now face. We need Him to turn this nation around, and we need to be reminded every day that God remains in charge of all that is happening.