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So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:6-8

One of the unique perspectives from the midst of this perplexing pandemic is the increase in awareness of our own mortality. I’m not trying to be gloomy, just realistic. In America, God has graciously been stripping away all our normal distractions as we must focus on the reality of life and death. We can’t participate in our normal sports idolatry. Entertainment has been nearly all shut down... no concerts, movies, or shows. Medical science hasn’t spoken with unified authority. Politics is in complete disarray, an even worse fragmentation than it has ever been. Add to all this the disorder of “organized protests” by anarchists in many major cities, and even the justice and legal system has little assuring presence for us. We have to face life and death personally in ways this generation has never had to do.

Despite all this, I find my courage with Paul the apostle who penned these words two millennia ago in the midst of a world in turmoil. If we read ahead in 2 Corinthians, we see that Paul tells us what that turmoil was like for him in his first hand experience. Here’s the short list: rejection, public floggings, stoning and left for dead, three different shipwrecks, being lost at sea, robbed, lied about, sleeplessness, hunger, thirst, cold, and exposure. Yet despite these nearly constant realities, Paul chose to live proclaiming the gospel (which kept getting him these results) and was confidently ready to be at home with Jesus if he were to die preaching the gospel story.

Paul had a courage that God was in control whether Paul was “at home in the body” or “at home with the Lord”. Knowing that God had his mortality directed toward eternity in God’s presence kept Paul confident and strengthened him despite uncertainty in all his circumstances. And that truth also enlightens me in my own uncertain days. With false trusts swept away, I am confident to believe these words: “away from the body, at home with the Lord”!