Happy New Year!!!

Good bye 2020! Hello 2021.

2020 has been the most difficult year for me. My guess is that everyone has been struggling as well.

The year started with news about COVID-19. A few jokes about eating bushmeat, like bats. Then came the announcement that the prevalence of viral infections has brought on a worldwide pandemic. Nations shutdowns. I had to get used to wearing masks, social distancing, and hunkering down indoors.

I had a hell of a time trying to find toilet paper for weeks!

I never thought I’d be lying on my futon on Sunday morning streaming a church service on my iPhone and calling that worship. But that is pretty much the way things went in spring and summer.

Zoom became a way of meeting with people, albeit it’s nothing close to embodied personal social interactions.

Went to the doctor for a regular check-up, then got a message telling me to come back to the office to get tested for COVID-19 as I might have gotten exposed from another patient. I got tested, never thought my sinus went that deep, felt like a total brain tickle. Fortunately, the test came back negative.

This has been a year of lamentation.

A grand illusion that is being shattered is that if I just eat right, exercise regularly, sleep enough that I could live a long and fulfilling life, perhaps with new medical technologies extend life indefinity. None of this is total truth. Things happening in 2020 constantly reminded me of my own mortality. The truth is everybody has an expiration date. Some of us are closer to that date than others but we all get there. Of course, I make efforts at right eating, regular exercising, and enough sleeping, there are benefits to these practices, but the expiration date still comes. This is the vanity of vanities.

Advent gives hope. God became a man so that humanity can enter into union with God. Moreover, this first advent points forward to the second Advent. Christ has died, He is risen, He will come again. Things do appear to be falling apart, but God is with us, and things are going to be alright.

I am surrounded by trouble, but the Spirit brings to remembrance the teaching of the Apostle Paul:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:18-23, ESV).

Keep holding on. This gloom will not last forever. We have a hope of being raised immortal, imperishable, and incorruptible!

Meanwhile, I am still deeply appreciative for my family, friends, and everyone else who reads my posts. I know everyone is having a hard time. I am confident that we can get through this. Thanks for sharing life together. Hold on and new day is coming. Wish you all the best for 2021.

Godspeed!

— WGN