New Normal or New Creation?

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 

–Hebrews 4:1

In recent days I’ve been questioning my future hopes. As the pandemic took hold, I experienced an intense longing to get back to the life that I had known. Quarantine living brought with it an endless list of things that I’d given up to flatten the curve that someday soon I’d be able to enjoy again. I looked to the “new normal” as a finish line that, in just a little while, I’d be able to reach.

But as this crisis worsened, exacerbated by many of the conditions that had existed pre-COVID-19, I began to realize that the life that we knew was no paradise; it was at best a life “in-between” and there was yet a work to be done, not only in the world but also in me.

Such was the situation of the original recipients of the letter to the Hebrews. Facing increasing persecution, they were tempted to abandon their commitment to Christ. Therefore, the author takes them on a journey through their history and ritual, encouraging them to persevere in the faith that was not only transforming them but also the world around them. 

He encourages them not to wax nostalgic for the “good old days” of Moses or Joshua but to look toward the kingdom that cannot be shaken and the cessation of their striving that is God’s promised Sabbath-rest. He exhorts them to do so by remaining sensitive and obedient to the word of God, alive and active.

That same word is alive and active in our day. As a real crisis tested the Israelites in the desert, so this pandemic has revealed our American situation. It has highlighted our connectedness even when we’d hoped to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. It has emphasized our vulnerability even as we’d once considered ourselves impervious, and it has displayed our inability even as we imagined ourselves the most capable. 

But our response, as the Hebrews’, must not be to shrink back but to lean in to the uncomfortable, exposing work of the word of God. We accept its findings as it reveals our faults, acknowledging them and repenting of them. We hold firm as well as it strips away our false hopes, placing our sights not on the “new normal” but on the new creation that awaits those who persevere. And, in the meantime, wherever we find ourselves, we do God’s will, praying that in all things he might be glorified.