A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19…
after you have followed all the official protocols
A Guide to a Standing Resolute in a Time of Uncertainty
In our series, A Practical Guide to Navigating Covid-19, we have explored how to effectively manage our time now that online learning is a reality as well as how to be social through a season of social distancing. Now, let’s walk through how we can stand resolute in times of uncertainty.
Words like pandemic, coronavirus, COVID-19, social distancing, and shelter in place were rarely if ever uttered, and now they are a part of our everyday vocabulary in this very interesting year of 2020. We all are adjusting to a new normal and our SLU team is standing in absolute resolve, with other believers all around the word, as we seek God’s face and direction in the midst of our circumstances. Though we are adjusting the sails, the mission remains the same.
As you know, this is not the first time our world has faced strange and troubling times. A quick glance through history books will reveal event after event, each with different shades of tragedy and tumultuousness. It also reveals, event after event of our faithful and loving God proving himself trustworthy and victorious. This time will be no different.
There is a speech from our 26thPresident of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, that is timely as we navigate the days ahead. He gave a speech titled The Man in the Arenain 1910, one year after he concluded his time in office. Over 3000 people gathered on that warm and humid day. Ministers, Army and Navy officers, businessmen and women, and moms and dads made up some of the audience. But what stood out to me is that 900 members of that audience were students. They were young men and women who cared about the state of the world and desired to mSOake a difference. This time will be no different.
In addition to other things, the purpose of Roosevelt’s speech was to come against and silence cynics who looked down at young people who were trying to make the world a better place. This is what he said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
When our current circumstances pass, and they will pass, we as leaders will have a huge task before us. We resolve to rise up and lead with joy for a merry heart does good like a medicine (Prov 17:22). We resolve to be the hands and feet of Jesus, loving well and laughing often! We have survived tragedy before, and we will survive the days ahead as well. God is faithful.This time will be no different.