Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

What’s our response as Christians – individually and collectively – when we find ourselves in the midst of a storm?

• My God, why is this happening to me?

• God is testing me: I’m going to suit up for battle.

• What a storm! I’m going to grab my surfboard and ride the wave.

We’ve all been in a constant state of multiple unexpected changes since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work closures, sickness, death, vaccines and boosters, viral variants, mask wearing, kids home from school, relocations, shortages, travel restrictions, and lockdowns have become a regular part of our daily existence.

If COVID-19 is the stormy sea, some folks are in a yacht, others have a small boat, and others are treading water.

Yet as Christians, in the midst of everything and regardless of our circumstances, we are admonished to “...rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul’s words, speaking to the Church at Thessaloniki, are just as relevant to us today.

Rejoice. Pray. Give thanks. Not just during the good times, but during the challenging times as well. Especially during the challenging times. As I stated in the first sentence, this applies to our individual response and our collective response as communities of faith.

Let’s take a look at responses:

Response One: My God, why is this happening to me?

Response one puts us in the place of being a victim. Something is happening to us. There is no access to power. Often times, really bad theology accompanies this response.

• I’ve fallen out of favor with God.
• I’m being punished for some sin.
• I have no say in the direction of my life.

I’ve been here. You’ve been here. We’ve all been here. It’s OK to be here. It’s just not in our best interest to stay here. Why? Because it’s debilitating. It diminishes us. We can end up waiting for this imagined angry God’s wrath to cease, and in the meantime, we simply hunker down and hope for the best.

Response Two: God is testing me: I’m going to suit up for battle.

Response two is often an angry response. “Another test, eh, Lord? Fine. Watch me crush it.” This is actually a big step up from response one on the access to power scale. Why? Because we’re in action. We’ve made a choice to be angry and to do something about our situation.

It is still representative of bad theology. It posits that God is constantly testing us, yet the Epistle of James, 1:17, tells us that “...every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” God is the giver of good.

Again, we’ve all been here. It’s still not the response that will best serve us and advance us from where we are, because it only looks at “defeating” the current challenge.

Response Three: What a storm! I’m going to grab my surfboard and ride the wave.

Response three is gold! It sees the storm as transformative, not destructive. It recognizes life for the adventure that it is, knowing that the journey will always present us with challenges from which we can grow. It looks beyond the immediate circumstances to the future, knowing that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord, to paraphrase Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 8:28. This is our access to divine power.

How can we put this into practice? No matter which response we initially land on: Rejoice. Pray. Give thanks. Do so individually, and call your community of faith to do so collectively. Then ride the wave.