Like countless others, I’ve been working from home for nearly nine weeks. Allow me first to insert a praise break, as I am grateful to the Lord Most for providing me with employment that has enabled such a practice. The reality that accompanies my new normal has involved participating in an endless number of virtual meetings. Now this is where I may insert my frustration. I thought it was only me until I began to witness the internet being inundated with research about the difficulty experienced in participating in virtual meetings. One has to engage so many different senses that it can become overwhelming. I have to watch what is being done. I am required to listen. I must ensure that the internet is working properly. This was especially difficult during the mid March until the beginning of May, when the graduate student was sheltering in place with us and online for 12 hours per day attending virtual class with her program in Paris. Finally, if it was raining, forget it! Inevitably while I am fastened to viewing the computer monitor, I notice the following words plastered on the screen, “Your connection is unstable.” When these words pop up, folks that I’m meeting virtually with are seemingly frozen in time. I’m also unable to listen to the conversation or what is occurring. When the connection is reestablished, I’ve had to ask folx to repeat what I missed. If however the connection remains disabled, I am occasionally forced to depart, reboot and reconnect. What might “your connection is unstable” look like in God?”
God has not gone fishing. Contrary to what some may have told you or persuaded you to believe, God remains on the throne. The better question or assessment we might entertain, is “Where is our faith?” Have we exchanged it for the belief system of the world? Have we continued to cultivate it during crisis or have we penalized it amidst a pandemic? In other words, “Is Our Connection Unstable?”
For me, there are markers or indicators that my signal is weak. I’m operating in worry as opposed to trust in God. I’m awake during the night not praying, but instead overcome with various scenarios of how a situation may play out. I’m short with people I love and who I know love me. I’ve not spent a significant time in the Word. I’ve not spent time embracing the beauty of creation around me. I’ve not stolen time away from the busy to just love on God, to hear His plans for my life, to spend time in my grateful seat, thanking Him for the big, but most certainly the small. Each of these aforementioned actions can disrupt my connection, resulting in me being unstable in all my ways. And until I am able to address my behavior, I am similar to my virtual meeting, frozen, immobile of moving in God and the assignments and purpose He’s deemed for me. And further, similarly, when I come into the knowledge that my connection will not resume until I take action, I may depart bad habits or tendencies and reboot in the knowledge that God would have for me to operate in and reconnect with God through repenting and asking again for my thoughts, decisions and actions to be guided by the Creator of my soul.
In contrast, the enemy of my soul (and yours) desires that we remain in state of disconnect. Growing up, before there was satellite, as one of the youngest of my cousins, I was tasked with holding the antennae in the right spot in order for the signal to remain strong. We must position ourselves in God so that we remain connected and strong in Him. Matthew 7: 24-25 reads, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” We have great opportunity to remain connected to the Rock and fight against all manner of instability. Ask yourself today, “Is My Connection Unstable?” If so, depart, reboot and reconnect. There is no victory in remaining frozen.
