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Moving Forward to A New Normal, A Newness of Life

April 30, 2020 | Original devotional contributed by Russel Maata and rewritten by Fe Foronda

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  1. We can RESET things, changes has to be done. When our mobile devices hung up on us, when a virus causes it to freeze, we reset and go back to its original set-up. There are things the Lord wants to reset in our lives, things that may have accumulated without us knowing it, viruses that destroy our life files. It is time to reset, so we can go back to our original design- a creation with dignity and worth, becoming more Christ like.

  2. We can RELEASE things which we hold on to tightly. This pandemic has made us assess the most important and essential things in life. The pandemic has to force us in isolation for us to confront things alone and wrestle with God.  Forgetting what is behind and pressing towards the mark! Let go of the things that entangles us and let God occupies our thoughts and being.

  3. God RENEWS us with a new hearth, a new normal of how we lead our life.  God wants us to to unlearn the ways of the world. With humility we can ask God to make things new in our life.

 

What must be our response?

 

We must appreciate our new normal. We have arrived at a season of acceptance. Do not fret, do not long for the spices of Egypt. Many says, it will be a different world we will see after our isolation- a new world, a new way of doing things for the best of us, and humanity.

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We must appreciate people around us, our family and friends, them who we took for granted pre-COVID times. Our home quarantine forced us to see their qualities in a new light, affiliations which we took lightly as we entangle our lives with a lot of misdirected affections. Small things such as a handshake or a hug which we were deprived of during the pandemic have new meanings to us, we long for human touch.

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We must appreciate God. When we are confronted with stories of sickness and death, and is made aware of our own finiteness, we appreciate this life as a gift, a precious one indeed.

 

We only appreciate this newness of life if we RESET, RELEASE, RENEW. As we journey together through the pandemic, we will emerge changed persons, tried and tested, emerging as gold purified through fire.  

 

‘Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!’ Psalms 150:6

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In  Exodus 14:1-31, the descendants of the

tribe of Jacob through the leadership of

Moses, were freed from the bondage in

Egypt. There is only one way to move

forward- out of Egypt towards the

promised land. However, when the

Israelites are in the desert, they long for

the onions and garlic of Egypt, they

wanted to go back to their old normal,

their bondage. The usual smell of the

spices entice them to go back to their

old self, losing track of the goal- the

promised land where honey is flowing

and freedom from slavery is ensured.

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In this pandemic, we can learn on three things while we move forward to our new normal:

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