When you think of the Sabbath, what do you think of? Do you think of your local church service? Some worship songs, a message, and fellowship of other Christians? Do you think of your Sunday routine? Do you think of the last moments of family time before dreaded Monday morning?

Or do you think of rest? Do you think of a day where you don’t have to work or accomplish anything, and you just get to relax? Yes, our Sabbath in these times has come to mean church and Sunday morning, but in reality the Sabbath God is talking about in the ten commandments is a day of rest.

This Christmas, I was gifted a book that lists out 150 popular hymns, their sheet music, and a bio of where the hymn was inspired. I picked it up over the past few days and I’ve been leafing through it; finding the hymns I have sung all my life and reading the backstory on where they come from. I have to admit, there are so many hymns that I don’t know, and yet the words to them are sincerely profound and beautiful. This past weekend, I found myself singing “It is Well with My Soul” over and over again as I did housework, so I decided to look it up in the book and find out the inspiration from the song.

I am dissatisfied. I don’t want to be but I am. It’s so easy to fall into a habit of discontentment. As a young person, I was taught that there would be so much to accomplish in all the areas of my life. I was praised by others constantly for my potential, talents, and promise. Naturally, as you grow older and make decisions in your life, it feels like that endless potential you’re told about when you’re in school grows limits. And that's a hard feeling to grapple with. You think to yourself: I’m almost x years old! I thought I’d have accomplished this by now! I thought I’d have this much in my bank account! I thought I’d be in a much easier place! Where did all that potential go?

Let’s be real: How many of us really read those introductions to the various letters in the Bible? Do we read them with the intent to get something out of it, or do we gloss over them and jump right into the thick of it? I always try, and I mean really try, to break those opening sentences down. I admit, it can be really hard to do, mostly because they can be long, run-on sentences, and truthfully, most of them say the same thing: Grace and peace be with you. It’s always something along those lines.

Hey Pops, Teach me to be satisfied every morning. I’ve grown too used to putting off satisfaction for another day when some lofty goal is reached. I’ll be satisfied when I’m skinnier. I’ll be satisfied when I have x amount of money in my savings. I’ll be satisfied when my house is clean. There are a million reasons to put off satisfaction and happiness. It never takes long to sink into a rhythm of dissatisfaction with life. Why? Because I’ve grown used to my spiritual and emotional joy being contingent on temporal, and quite frankly, fleeting things.

Picture this: The world seems to hold its breath and is eerily still. The wind whips through cold, damp trenches as the minutes tick into the wee hours of the morning. The year is 1914 and you are a soldier in the army holding down the western front against the Germans in World War I. The war began earlier that year at the beginning of the summer, and has been relentless ever since. If you were crazy enough to poke your head out of the trench to look across No Man’s Land, the bodies laying out in the cold would be staggering– a fresh dusting of snow being their only burial shroud. You miss your family, your hometown, and your own warm bed. It almost seems like a lifetime away as you sit at the bottom of this trench, the soil packed hard and unforgiving. You count the days since you’ve been here when it occurs to you; it’s Christmas Eve.

First, love: a love that can only be shared once it is experienced in its deepest form, by realizing the love God gave to us and allowing it to transform us from the inside out. Second, joy: a joy that wells up and overflows from the innermost parts of us and is not dependent on external happiness to be sparked or sustained, having the ability to remain joyful for others regardless of our personal issues. Today, peace. More specifically, inner peace– as the Amplified Bible so specifically points out. Are you noticing a trend? Because I am!

Truth time: Recently, I realized how numb I can become to the goodness of God. It was the week of Good Friday. My family and I watched “The Passion of the Christ.” Funny, how a confrontation with the cross can realign us and set us straight. As much as I hate to say this, as I became a teenager, I forgot the importance of that sacrifice. I felt as if it was just another story in a book. I never really thought about the whole meaning behind it or realized that if it weren’t for God’s sacrifice, I wouldn't have eternal life. I wouldn't be able to say that I don't have to punish myself because I’ve sinned over and over again.

Boy, is this coronavirus teaching me a thing or two about my control issues. For those who don’t know, I’m supposed to get married in June. And by that, I mean, it’s still happening, but we’re getting to the point where some difficult decisions have to be made. Me, I was always the girl who dreamed about her wedding: the fairytale day that’s all about me and the love of my life taking the biggest step together. I grew up dreaming about every aspect of the day from the food and flowers to the music and the dress.

I struggled over whether or not I would speak on this. Between the memes, the news, the hysteria, and the somehow innate feeling that all people have to comment on current events– as if it changes much of anything– I feel that what I have to say is of little to no consequence compared to the ocean of content concerning COVID-19. Nevertheless, I am hearing some things from my fellow Christians that just don’t sit right with me, and although I know my thoughts are just a drop in the bucket, I do have to stand against the strange and unbiblical ideas that I see with a simple scroll through any of my social media outlets.

You can be honest: Did you actually read today’s key verse, or did your eyes glaze over once you realized it was familiar? I know I do it. If I have a verse memorized, I don’t tend to read it when I recognize it. My mind automatically goes on airplane mode, thinking, “Oh, I know that. Let’s skip past this part.” Because my time is so valuable, I can’t even read a verse that I’ve become so obviously numb to, right? Because I’m so busy, I can’t reconnect with a precious scripture that is something I desperately need to hear, right?

Do you ever find yourself feeling like you are surrounded; like you feel like you need to be scared of everything? Life can be so overwhelming at times, it feels like it completely encompasses you day by day. We have all been there, and when you are feeling that way– when you are letting the world invade your thoughts and emotions– you are forgetting the who God made you. You are forgetting the platform that you stand on each day and how the Lord arms us with his love and strength.

“I just don’t know what to do,” a close family friend said over coffee one night. “My daughter is afraid to go to the mall, the movies, school. She’s afraid to live her life.” I remember those words being spoken years ago, after the school shooting at Sandy Hook. That was nearly six years ago, and in the time that’s passed, I can’t say with any kind of confidence that this world has gotten any better. Media tries to top itself with more outrageous headlines and sin-sick people try to outdo the last. It would take too long to list the heartbreak and the anguish. And because of that, lots of people– Christians included– walk in fear of what tomorrow night bring or whether they’ll become another statistic, another name on a list.

Hey, Pops, Today, I lay no petitions, no requests, and no pleas at your feet. For just a moment, I only want to sit in awe of you. Constantly, you beckon me to come close to your heart; you give me permission to intimately know you, to dive deeper into who you are. And constantly, I am distracted by the desires of my own heart. How many times have I passed up the opportunity to just be with you by filling up the time and space with my selfishness and my “needs?” How many times have I missed the opportunity to get to know more of you, because I wanted you to hear more of me?

Growing up, I had very few worries. I was always that happy, go-lucky kid who just wanted to have fun and enjoy life with friends and family. My mom even told me of a time in a store parking lot, where I was walking and flailing my arms around without a care in the world. Before she could stop me, I went up to a random man and wished him a happy birthday. I had no idea if it was the man’s birthday, but that didn’t stop me. That was who I was.

Over the past week, I’ve been following a devotion through Isaiah 43, asking questions that both cause me to read between the lines and give me pause to listen to what God has to say about this beautiful love letter in scripture. And in this passage, God addresses one of the most common yet subjective, sneaky yet guttural emotions in the human experience: Fear.