I hope this post finds you all well and safe, most likely curled up in your newfound favorite spot of the house, maybe even a cup of coffee in hand.
Maybe the sun is streaming through the windows and you’re wearing the #perfect comfortable and put together WFH outfit (shameless plug to my past blog post.)
You’re the beacon of productivity and virtual socializing. You have a perfect sleep schedule, do home workouts 4 times a day, bake fresh bread every morning, and feel better than ever before.
Did I describe your current shelter-in-place situation? Yeah, same here.
I think I glamorized what all of this would be like in my head.
Towards the beginning, I painted a picture similar to the one above, taking full advantage of the flexible schedule and alone time. An introvert’s dream!
But I was really just fooling myself, because whether we like it or not: the current situation we as a world are in just really sucks. That’s just a fact, and one I’m sure we all know and have felt to some degree.
Here’s another bombshell – the world has always sucked.
We’ve always been cheaters, liars, and selfish, plagued with disease, oppression, injustice, destruction, war, and violence. Not to in any way undermine the current pain you may be experiencing because that is completely valid, but the idea of suffering and brokenness is definitely not a new one.
I memorized these verses from Hebrews in early March, and have found myself coming back to them over and over, and wanted to share them with you today:
“At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more’ indicates the removal of the things that are shaken – that is, things that have been made – in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
Hebrews 12:26-29
I don’t want to add to the noise. I want to keep this simple.
This world can be shaken.
It’s being shaken up a bit right now.
And this verse, as well as numerous others, prophesy one final time that world will be shaken – when Jesus returns.
And everything temporary, all our earthly comforts, our possessions, our social media presence, our most treasured things, will be removed. gone. As 1 John 2:17 puts it, “the world is passing away along with its desires.”
There is good news in these verses for us!
The temporary, earthly things MUST be shaken so that the unshakable things may remain.
Hebrews 12:28 promises us that we are receiving a kingdom that CANNOT BE SHAKEN.
Oh, how reading those words fills me with peace and assurance that this, right now, is not the end of the story.
The verse doesn’t end there – it calls us to worship wholeheartedly the God who is mighty, powerful, sovereign, and, as Hebrews puts it, ‘a consuming fire.’
We still have reason to worship God, but not because of our circumstances or because of the post-pandemic plans we have already made.
We can worship God for more reasons than I could write about, but we can worship him right now because we can trust his promise that the world will not always suck –
because one day this world will be shaken by the creator of the universe when he sets all things right.
Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.