Worship Inside and Out

"I can see clearly now!" For generations before the year 2020, most of us only associated the term "2020" with vision. Generally speaking, those with 20/20 vision are considered to have normal eyesight. They can see objects clearly at a distance of 20 feet, which must be a wonderful feeling! For years, I've fallen into the camp of those who don't have normal vision. For me to be able to see clearly at 20 feet -- or less than two feet -- I need glasses to correct my vision. Glasses filter the world around me to help my eyes and brain work together to process things more clearly. Without my glasses, things look blurry. Details are missing. My understanding of who or what I see is unsure. I can easily get confused or even deceived by what I think I see when I don't have on my glasses. But once I put on my glasses, my vision is corrected. I can see clearly. Things aren't blurry. Details are present. My understanding of who or what I see is sure. I don't easily get confused or even deceived by what I see when I have on my glasses.

For me -- and perhaps most of us -- the year 2020 was a year of putting on new glasses and seeing some things more clearly. We didn't plan it that way. It just happened. The pandemic hit us like a blindside tackle. Within weeks, our world changed. Most of us found ourselves working from home for a while. Many found themselves unable to work, as businesses closed their doors and lay-offs rapidly escalated. Schools were shuttered, leaving teachers scrambling to move their classrooms online, and the basic supplies we needed for cleaning and protection couldn't be found in the stores that were still open in our communities. For the first time in our lives, churches in our states were told to close their doors. Hopefully for the last time in our lives, churches in most communities weren't able to come together in person to worship on Easter Sunday! Everything in our lives seemed blurry. All the details weren't present. We were confused and wondering if we might even be deceived. Everything had changed.

The pandemic would be enough, but as the old saying goes, bad things usually happen in threes. I don't know if that's true, but it at least seemed to be doubly true in 2020. With an already contentious presidential election underway, social unrest spread across the United States in the wake of the death of George Floyd, leading us into a summer that was hot politically and socially. For those of us on the gulf coast, natural disaster after natural disaster was added to the mix, as one of the busiest hurricane seasons in decades hit our country. There were fires and earthquakes in the west, and there was snow all over! For all of us, the year 2020 was a tough year. It was a year that stretched and strained us in various ways, but it was a year that also allowed some of us to see some things come into focus. From family time to finances and from social issues to the church, we all had to do some straining to get focus.