How are you doing this year? Did you see all these changes coming, in 2020? I didn’t.

It’s clear to all of us that things are still changing. Everyone I know does not like the restrictions with the COVID pandemic, and we wonder when things will be normal again. That will be never. Disruption to our lives, and the cost of coping with COVID restrictions is forcing businesses, employers, to close; and they might never re-open. The world has changed forever.

READ: Covid-19 will permanently change the world’s economy

So, what does that mean to us? What happens when my life changes, and keeps changing? What will happen to you? This is not an abstract economic theory, this is a permanent change to the way we live, and it has already happened. Soon we will see and feel the effects.

I work at a job that I really enjoy, and in a few days it will all be over. I can’t tell you what it is until the work has stopped because I work under oath, but I am proud of what I do. The cause of my termination was COVID 19. The work will be sent to contractors, and I can still make money, but the job that I enjoyed so much is gone forever.

What changes are you dealing with? If you don’t know now, just wait.

I’m writing this as a Christian. Where is God now? Why did God let this happen? Doesn’t God love us?

The questions just come, but not the answers. I was thinking and wondering and searching for answers about the way our lives have flipped, and I have found one answer.

I made the change.

When I was a young man, I made a decision about a man named Jesus. I remember standing at a bus stop on a snowy day in December. I didn’t join a religion or go to a church; I just made a quiet decision about one person. For several days, everything seemed the same, but then I left school and started a new job. That change was the most stressful thing I ever experienced. The job was not a good one, but I needed money to start my adult life.

I didn’t understand why God would bring that change, and so much stress, into my life. I was trying to do the right thing, and I felt like I was being punished. Now I know, that naive boy from high school needed to grow up and live in the world, as a man.

When I prayed at that snowy bus stop, I asked God to change me, and there was no expiry date on that request. Now, if some good things, from God, have grown in me, that good needs to travel. It’s not about me, God has work to do in this world, and I asked to be one of His workers. Spiritual things are bigger than most of us know. There may be some important reasons why I lost that job; God’s ‘deposit’ in me needs some exercise.

Our instructions are: “Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” (2 Timothy 1: 14)

One woman prayed, the way I did, and she found a new life. She needed a new life, and she found it, and then everything fell apart, in church. When she stood up to speak about the new life she had found, she had a stroke in front of a large audience. I hope she can recover now and I don’t believe that a bad thing was good for her. This was a radical disruption in her life, but If she was not speaking in a church, if she still lived her old life, that medical condition would probably have killed her, in some dark place. She was able to speak, and some good came from that change in her life. Who knows how her life story can change people:

For believers who follow Jesus, radical disruptions come on us for a reason. God has work to do and we are the workers. We carry a ‘deposit’ and it needs to be circulated.

Get ready for 2021.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5: 13 to 16)