Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 24/Jan/2021]

Martin recently explored the difference between an interruption and a disruption, his main point being that a disruption does not permit a return to ‘normal’. When things have changed so much that only a ‘reset’, a paradigm shift in our thinking leading to a radically new way of doing things, will enable us to move forward.

The story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11 really made me think! The people had become so proud of their own achievements that they began to build a city and a tower to “make a name for ourselves, otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” [Genesis 11 v 4]

Years ago many of us read a book called ‘Out of the Saltshaker’. Using Jesus’s own words in Matthew 5, we found ourselves challenged, commanded, to be salt in the world – enhancing the flavour of people’s lives and keeping what’s good from spoiling. But what strikes me is the possibility that one of the reasons Jesus may be allowing this pandemic to roll on is that we, his partners in Kingdom work, need to finally and irreversibly get rid of our ‘in the salt cellar’ mentality, and allow ourselves to be scattered.

If, as I wrote a few months ago, the fields really are white, ready for a huge harvest, can we expect to bring it in by doing things the way we’ve always done them? I feel as though I’m always playing the same note on my fiddle. Maybe the Holy Spirit is far ahead of me. Maybe I’m in for a surprise when I see more clearly what He has done and is doing!

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