Reflections on New Rhythms

 

REFLECTIONS ON NEW RHYTHMS

 The two years pandemic has profoundly altered us. It has changed the rhythms of life – right from what time you wake up to how you get ready (or not) for work or school i.e. whether you shower and dress up or just show up in front of your screen in your jammies!

How we eat has changed, and how we do recreation has changed. Our relationships have altered significantly and who is or is not in your inner circle may have gone through a change.

For some new rhythms have meant going it alone because you lost a loved one in this catastrophic crisis. Your faith has either deepened or gone dull. Your value for the community has been tested. Your work-life balance has been shot down.

How have you adjusted? How are you doing? Do you have a plan of how you will lead yourself out of this global crisis?

Like it or not we have all changed because of the pandemic. We deserve a pat on the back for doing so well.

Now the challenge before us is how will we walk through and out of it. Will it be business as usual, going back to the ways things were?

I would like to suggest that there is no going back to the way things were before because “before “does not exist anymore. The landscape has changed – we have all changed, and the economy has changed.

There is a new rhythm, and we need to be able to perceive it. We need to pause and ponder, listen, and slowly change the rhythm of our footsteps to fall in line with the new so that we will not be out of sync and trip over our own lack of coordination.

What does that look like for you? As I ponder, I think of many areas in my life. Do I recognize the new rhythms and am I falling in line? Do I recognise how the world around me, people and community have changed?

Embracing this change will include a cross-over season that will look a little chaotic in the period of adjustment. Remember no one has walked this way before. There is no blueprint to follow except that you have a good plumbline by which you check how you are building going forward. In this chaotic season of change, I also need to embrace the pain of change, or the change will be painful. It is a season of uncertainty – no guarantees that this or that will work as this is unchartered territory.

So where do we turn to for wisdom, for light, for a dependable plumbline? Many leadership gurus will tell you this and that and some of it is very good advice.

I’d like to suggest a dependable plumbline, a lamp that lights my path: The Alpha and Omega who has not been taken by surprise. He knows the end and the beginning. He led an entire nation through forty-year crises of wandering in the wilderness to finally possessing the Promised Land.

God’s ways are higher and better and utterly dependable because He is Good and will work all things out for my good because I am loved by Him.

Jesus, The Way, will show me the way and I can rest in this confidence that as I follow in His footsteps, I will find the new rhythm and be in sync.