“Honestly, kids, I’m not sure what kind of world you’ll grow up in.”

The kids and I have had some conversations lately that are a little awkward. The other day my 7-year-old wondered aloud what new innovations and technologies will be available when he’s an adult, and we had fun daydreaming about progress in that way.

But I couldn’t really deny the fact that someday, our national debt will catch up with us and someone is going to want their money. And I’m no Greta Thunberg, but before too long our reckless overuse of resources will visibly start affecting us, too. Our kids’ future probably won’t look like the Jetsons.

I was born in 1992, so I’ve been blessed to live in relatively peaceful and prosperous times, but my Mammaw grew up in the Depression where food was rationed and her brother was drafted then killed in war. Even recent hurricanes gave us a little scare; we could not buy peanut butter, soup, bread, or bottled water. I know that this is normal for many other countries, but especially for a private-schooled white girl like me, America has always felt so safe and secure. Yet there is no telling what it will be like in twenty years.

Or, given this recent coronavirus, I don’t know what our nation will be like in a few months. If schools are shut down, what are dual-income families going to do? Lots of people might not have money to get their houses pressure washed by my husband’s company, that’s for sure. The stock market has already dropped. So what’s going to happen to our family’s business?

Considering the Realities of World History

I’m not complaining or worrying here, I hope you know. I’m just being honest: stability is not something that we’ve ever been promised. America isn’t immune to the harsh realities that the majority of our fellow planet-dwellers are living in today, or the dramatic upheavals that have occurred even to the most prosperous nations throughout world history.

All major world powers have fallen eventually, often dramatically. When’s the last time you heard someone talking about the power and wealth of Babylon? Or even Egypt? Or Greece? Only a hundred years ago, Britain was a fearsome global empire who held control of a quarter of the earth’s land area. Now these places are mostly known as tourist destinations.

Or let’s talk about the planet. I’m not in denial about climate change, but even if I was…plastic doesn’t go away, and l already see an influx in garbage everywhere I go. Deforestation in our town has completely changed the landscape, and a surprising variety of starving wildlife have taken refuge on our precious little acre, ravenously destroying all our attempts at raising chickens.
Best-case scenario, in a couple of decades America will not look as beautiful as it does right now. But plenty of other possibilities about our nation’s and planet’s future are, of course, much more grim.

We’ll Be Okay

Anyway, as I tried to figure out a gentle yet honest way to explain this to my kids (ages 7, 6, 4, and 2) the most obvious and helpful and true thing that I could say was, “But all these things don’t really matter. We’ll be okay.”

I wasn’t implying a sentiment such as “Economic collapse won’t affect us because we have lots of gold buried in various places” (we don’t) or even “We’re hard workers; we’ll figure something out.”

I also definitely wasn’t saying “God won’t let anything bad happen to our family.” God certainly let bad things happen to Joseph, and Job, and, um, Jesus. Also, ten out of eleven of Christ’s remaining disciples were murdered. Jesus’s death and resurrection destroyed death’s power over us, but it doesn’t mean we don’t still feel the pain of it.

When I said “We’ll be okay” I meant that I actually believe that “He will be the stability of your times” (Isaiah 33:6.)

I’ve been walking with Jesus long enough to know that the factors of my life — even dramatic ones — have no actual correlation with my joy or my future.

My greatest treasure can’t be taken away from me, even by a plummeting stock market or a world pandemic or…and I hate to even mention it, but the possible loss of my kids. If someone in our family passes away from this coronavirus or anything else, we will never be the same and we will continue to grieve the rest of our lives, but joy will come in the morning.

A Fearful Culture in Denial

We can’t live in fear, and at the same time, we can’t be in denial about how uncertain our lives and circumstances really are.

Frankly, our culture doesn’t know how to respond to suffering. One of the reasons we’re so addicted to our phones and entertainment is because we want to reject our own mortality and forget that we’re dying; we don’t want to think about the suffering and evil around us and in us.

Out of all the men and women in our country, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are hardly the top two most qualified candidates, but they’re the leading options right now because they’ve figured out how to motivate people with fear. We want to be able to say that if the right person is put in office, our problems will be fixed; and if the other person is put in office, we can blame them for everything that’s going wrong.

It’s just that the world’s problems are deeper and more encompassing than that, and we can’t keep pretending it’s not the case.

Trusting in the Even-If’s

I’m not going to preach a sermon here about how to respond to all this, because this article is long enough, and personally in times of crisis, I don’t respond well to abstract words on a screen that were written from the safety of someone’s couch. Maybe someday I’ll write something like “Five Truths About God’s Sovereignty to Comfort You”, but presently I’m not in the mood to read something like that. I’d rather just open my Bible.

But I do invite you, as I invited my kids, to believe with me that it’s possible that there’s “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Peter 1.) We can believe that it’s possible to “rejoice in the Lord always” even if we’re in prison like Paul was when he wrote those words (Phil 4:4.) As previously mentioned, we can trust that “He will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure” (Isaiah 33:6.)
We can hope in the day that “He will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8) and wipe away every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4.)

Even if our business suffers and we can’t afford to go on road trips or buy the Trader Joe’s goodies I want…even if our economy and/or agriculture collapses and I can’t find food at all…whether I’m dealing with first-world or third-world issues:

I can “mark the blameless, and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace” (Psalm 37:37.) We will be okay.

May I be like Godly women who have gone before me and “not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:6.) We will be okay.

May it be said of me and my children that “[she] is not afraid of bad news; [her] heart is firm, trusting in the LORD” (Psalm 112:7.) We will be okay.

“The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Isaiah 46:7.) We will be okay.

I hope this encourages you, too.

Some Practical Advice

-Don’t immerse yourself in the news. I get a free daily email from The New Paper that gives me relevant and interesting headlines in only a few sentences. It’s genuinely unbiased because they only state the facts and don’t give any commentary. This way I’m aware of what’s going on in the nation and world, and I can find out more if I want, but a few sentences a day is typically sufficient. (If I do want to read thoughtful opinions on current events, I like The Atlantic.)

-If all this stuff is making you freak out, get off social media for a bit. Go outside. The air is still fresh enough to breathe, and remembering God’s bigness and our own smallness is great medicine for worrying hearts who feel unsafe. It’s also great medicine for prideful hearts that overestimate their own security and resilience.

-Check yourself to see if you’re trying to forget reality. Is there a better way to deal with hard realities than turning on Netflix? Am I hoping that wine will do things for me that it’s simply not able to do?

-Memorize Psalm 46. It pulls no punches about the harsh realities of God’s sovereignty (“He has brought desolations on the earth”, what!?) But above all, it reminds us repeatedly that God is with us and we can be still. (And remember that the process of memorizing is the best part!)

-Find some good music with rock-solid theology. If I had to only recommend one album, it would be Psalms by Sandra McCracken. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been comforted at 3 am by singing “All Your works are good.”