When Comfy Rhythms Get Disrupted
Embracing the new work God is doing in the midst of COVID-19
Image by Chinnapong Getty Images Pro. Edited by author.
“No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” (Mark 2:22, NIV)
The world as we have known it for the last 18 months has been a challenge in which to find a rhythm. Our old ways of doing things have been flipped upside down.
Work, school, and church life were moved to different rhythms.
We started working remotely from home.
Our kids were tucked away in corners of the home clicking away on computers to do their schoolwork.
Pastors and worship teams frantically shifted weekly worship services to an online format where worshippers watched from home.
When you can’t find a rhythm
At some point, most of us accepted that this new “normal” would last for a season and then COVID-19 would go away. Then we could go back to the old rhythms.
There were times along the way when case numbers would drop and regulations would ease. At each of these moments, we were all wondering whether life would return to normal but then case numbers would spike again and we were forced to shift to safety protocols.
I can’t recall how many times this cycle happened but it felt a bit like that recurring scene from the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray is forced to live out his day only to wake up and repeat the process over and over again.
What I do recall is the sense that it was very difficult to find any kind of rhythm in this constant shifting. My personality is one that does not shy away from change. In fact, I am often energized by change.
But this never-ending cycle of change was tiring even to me.
I just couldn’t find a rhythm and I am pretty sure it was wearing on us all.
Hope is right around the corner
The widespread distribution of vaccine options began to give us hope. Health officials seemed to believe that if we could get 70% of our population vaccinated then COVID-19 would likely go away or at least be diminished significantly.
There was a palpable build-up that occurred around the 4th of July in 2021 when COVID case numbers dropped substantially, vaccination rates were climbing, and mask mandates were being dropped around the country.
Our nation had endured so much in terms of the tragic loss of life and negative economic impact. July 2021 felt like we had weathered the storm and life would move back to the old norms.
School was right around the corner, set to begin in late August. Teachers were desperate for a “normal” year. It looked like normal would be a real possibility.
Pastors secretly call September the start of “church season,” that period when people come back to church from summer vacations. Church leaders were eager for normal operations and it felt like that was going to happen at the start of church season.
Business owners and employers needed the economy to fully rebound. The supply chain needed to catch up to the pent-up demand that had been building. It looked like the Fall of 2021 would allow for normal retail operations. Unemployment numbers were dropping even as employers struggled to find help for what looked like fresh demand.
As of July 2021, there was a sense in the national environment that the world was coming back online and we were all breathing a sigh of relief.
Hope shattered
We were barely into August when we started hearing about the Delta variant of COVID which was more contagious.
COVID cases skyrocketed around the country and hospitals began to fill up again. A high number of people had resisted taking the vaccines. Hospitals and ICU units were brimming again with hospitals reporting the vast majority of their patients being unvaccinated. Large numbers of people were on ventilators again and death numbers picked back up.
Schools, churches, and workplaces had to alter plans again. Mask mandates were handed down by public health officials.
I don’t think we have fully processed how challenging this shift has been for us as a people to manage.
I know I felt it internally as a kind of disappointment, a shoulders slumping kind of sigh that says “Here we go again.”
We just wanted the world to go back to normal. Our nerves were frayed from the constant public spats over COVID-19 and numerous other culture wars we have been battling.
For a social person like me, I was hoping to gain back regular interaction with people. I was looking forward to returning to restaurants and to visiting vibrant cities again.
I was looking forward to limited usage of Zoom for those meetings that just don’t need to be in person.
As we sit here at the end of September 2021, I am scanning the horizon of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even a significant chunk of 2022 and am unsure of what the world will look like in the near future.
Part of me is skeptical and cynical that we will break this never-ending Groundhog day.
New wine requires new wineskins
A couple of months back, a pastor friend named Aaron and his wife Kristen opened a public invitation for people to join them at a local coffee spot (Prince Street Cafe in York, PA) on Friday mornings. They would join together to socialize and drink coffee together.
It was something new. The idea was simple but different. They had a good regular turnout of about 20 people crammed around a large table.
My wife Gail and I decided to attend one Friday. We sat with people we barely knew and had good conversations.
God used that simple moment to speak to me about new rhythms.
When God does something new, He usually breaks an old mold.
New wine expands in the fermentation process. Old wineskins are brittle and no longer pliable. Old skins have settled on a shape that is not hospitable to expansion.
You can’t put new wine into old wineskins. The expanding wine will explode the old wineskins.
New wine requires new wineskins that are pliable and flexible, ready to accommodate the expanding gases released in fermentation.
In my irritation with the lack of rhythms over the last 18 months, I realized that I was too comfortable with the old wineskins.
Having coffee together on a Friday morning with strangers was new and different. I don’t know that this would have taken place without the crushing sense of loneliness that COVID facilitated.
I walked away from that experience sensing that God was doing something new in the world, something the old wineskins could no longer accommodate.
God is making new wine.
For now, I have brought myself to a place of peace with the fact that the world has changed, that some rhythms had to die.
Old wineskins served their purpose for old wine.
Today is a day for making new wineskins, new forms to receive what God is doing in the world.
We have a fire pit in our backyard and my family loves to sit around it with friends and make smores.
A large tree next to my house died recently and my daughter and I just used a log splitter to create a mountainous pile of firewood.
My hope is to begin inviting different groups of people to come to hang with us around the firepit: students from school, friends from the community, people at church, etc.
I’m not going back to some old rhythm when God is doing something new and exciting.
God is making new wine in our world. We better start fashioning new wineskins to receive the gift.
