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Pandemic Planning

 I am moving ahead with my pandemic planning. I am fascinated by steam trains. I have ridden the Strasburg RR to Paradise in Strasburg, PA.;the CSRR in Conway, N. H.; the Scranton Limited based in Steamtown, PA.; and the D&S RR in CO running along a canyon river and then its steep side.

Naturally, I'm making plans to visit 5 different steam train rides near Portland ME as well as the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME.

Pandemic Planning says, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." (Ecclesiastes 3:1) In other words, don't go steaming along with your plans because they may go off the rails.

Ecclesiastes' author is a sage grown weary of life’s uncertainties. Therefore, he says, recognize your own mortality in the face of God’s eternity and be appropriately humble: “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it."(Ecclesiastes 3:14). There is a reliable order to God's creation: a time and a season for everything. 

Like the author of Ecclesiastes, I have grown weary of the unrest, chaos and pandemic conditions around me. I have grown weary of the causes creating them and events perpetuating them. Our society tells me to live the good life. Go steaming along with your plans. So what if you are in a high risk group. Wear a mask, wash your hands, do what you want. Risk going off the rails.

The unrest, chaos, and pandemic conditions are not part of God's created order. God's created order is hope, peace, and healing. There is a season of God's hope as someone recovered from Covid-19 leaves a hospital; peace in experiencing worship as best as we can; and healing in the research for a vaccine. 

How have you found hope, peace, and healing in our time of uncertainty?
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