“I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I’m holding the hand of the one who does” – Lee Strobel
At the end of April, I was going to be starting a programme called Celebrate Recovery – a faith based 12 step programme – a set of guiding principles outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion or other behavioural problems.
Due to Covid-19 it’s postponed for the foreseeable – like lots of others things.
Now we are living with most things in our lives postponed, cancelled, in limbo – we feel unsettled, anxious and unsure about what the future holds.
As a Christian all I can hold onto for certain is the hope, promises and love of God.
This doesn’t mean I’m not going to get ill; it doesn’t mean my friends and family won’t get ill or lose their jobs – faith is not magic.
My faith is centring, my faith helps to ground me, when all around me is chaotic, my faith gives me hope, hope that this time will pass and that we will learn and grow from it.
God promises that He is with me through this, that He will never leave me. In any pain or anxiety or suffering I go through, He will be standing by me, holding me close – I know this because I experience it through His words in the bible and through friendships and relationships with others, community and prayer.
When we have known brokenness, doubt, anxiety, fear, anger, confusion that binds us and corrodes us, we then experience Gods love, peace and freedom much more acutely.
Amazingly this is what Celebrate Recovery is about – working through hurts, habits and hang ups to find freedom, acceptance in ourselves and peace and love from our Higher Power, Jesus – one step at a time.
Step three in the 12 steps is all about letting go of what you can’t control and trusting God to steer the way – my prayer is that we can all do that, it’s hard, it may be different – but you might start to experience something releasing, something good in these dark times.
Anna Adams is a member of Wokingham Baptist Church, writing on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
