Not A Fan of Normal

I saw this meme the other day. “Normal isn’t coming back. Jesus is.” The latter is a very, very true statement. This is the blessed hope of every follower of Jesus. I don’t know that I can say the former with any authority. I don’t know if normal is coming back, but I sure hope not. I gotta be honest, I wasn’t too fond of normal before it left.

• I loved that families had to sit down and eat at home, creating conversations together because they had nowhere else to go to be distracted or hide from authenticity and intimacy.
• I loved that there were no concerts or sporting events to obsess over and/or distract toward idolatry.
• I loved that there were no “good movies” to see.
• I loved that people were spending their money on what was valuable, meaningful and crucial rather than on entertaining and/or numbing themselves instead of investing themselves.
• I loved that people were getting creative to deepen real relationships and enjoy themselves.
• I loved that people were fighting to get their churches reopened and found what they did at church to be more meaningful once they had been deprived of it for a few weeks.
• I loved that people started thinking about what AUTHENTIC community looked like…REAL people meeting REAL needs for the RIGHT reasons in the RIGHT ways.

I quite honestly think too much of it returned for too many people.