A similar title caught my eye recently as I thought about this past year and the pandemic we’re hopefully coming out of. Am I languishing in my time with God, or am I lingering and enjoying his presence?

I’ve shared before, I start each morning with sitting and staring, with quiet, listening, lingering. It readies me to read; it readies me to hear; it readies me to connect; it readies me for whatever the day may hold. Unless it doesn’t.

Lingering with God and his creation has been a spiritual discipline I’ve practiced for several years. But it was slipping.

What has changed? Why is this very good habit not quieting my heart, feeding my soul? Why is it suddenly hard? Are you noticing a difference in your times with God?

The pandemic affected me more than I realized.

I didn’t need to adjust to working from home — that was my norm.
I didn’t need to adjust to home-schooling — our nest is empty.
Ministry looked different — but ministry was happening.

But there were minor (at least that’s how I described them previously) changes creating new normals, normals with sizeable outcomes. Cyberspace instead of blacktops or planes soaring through skies connected me to others. I’m actually connecting with more people than before. True, but is that good?

Screen-time became common and perhaps too easy.
Grand-kid connections switched to Marco Polo and Google Hangouts.
Groceries were ordered on the small screen of my cell phone and picked up without ever leaving my car.
Church was online, in my pajamas with coffee in hand.
Ministry was by Zoom.
Texting passed along quick and easy answers.
Echoes of Grace supporting my ministry became my ministry life-line.
Group emails became normal, relating to many at once.

Then it happened one day — one morning really. My website crashed. Google wouldn’t let me in to my email. Mailchimp suddenly didn’t recognize me. I crashed too — my lifeline had been snapped.
And I thought back over the past 15 months, those long pandemic days.

At first I couldn’t comprehend Covid’s reality. Did we really need to close schools? Did we really need to hoard toilet paper and joke about its shortage?

At first I kind of enjoyed screens dominating my Sunday morning. I could attend my church and within an hour transport myself 1000 miles away and listen to my son preaching at his church.

Then came summer.

We moved to our Sanctuary, our small cabin in the Wet Mountains. Our Sanctuary is designed to be a time, a place of recharging and refueling. My cell phone still delivers emails, texts, and an occasional phone call. But my computer is okay with not being fired up daily. (At our Sanctuary, it is rarely fired up.)

I shifted into Sanctuary mode. It was good. It felt normal. I donned my mask for the weekly grocery trip because I actually went into this store for our bread and meat and weekly connection with other real live people.

In the fall I picked up where I left off. My computer once again a lifeline (see the paragraph that starts with the word screen-time).

In January we took a two-week island vacation. My computer stayed home; even my cell phone was quiet with the exception of its camera. Every morning I sat outside with my Bible and my journal, lingering with God. Listening to the sounds of creation, experiencing the warm breeze, loving the view. I especially loved spotting a Bananaquit several different times.

We returned home and I returned to life as I knew it the past 10 months.

But I began sensing a difference. Lingering with God wasn’t happening quite so much. Perhaps languishing, that feeling of stagnation and emptiness, was a more correct adjective.

The time at our Sanctuary and our January vacation were reprieves and they were good. But those brief weeks did not counteract the many weeks and the many reasons for screen-time.

The pandemic affected me more than I realized. Lingering was stunted. It became too easy to do life from my desk, and my desk called to me everyday.

Seeing those words together, languishing and lingering shocked me into realizing. Caused me to remember what I was missing. Lingering invited me to return.

“For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
‘In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.'”
Isaiah 30:15

How did the pandemic affect you?

Copyright, Sue Tell, May 2021