A friend last night showed on Zoom a wall in her house that is plastered with post-it notes. At some point during the coronavirus quarantine, she’d asked her family to write down positive things they were experiencing as a result of the quarantine and to post them on the wall. For weeks now she’s left them posted, so the family can remind themselves that even in this crisis, there are some good things happening.
Janet Hagberb and Robert Guelich do something similar in their book The Critical Journey. In the diagram below they sketch out six stages that many people encounter in their journey with God.
Of particular interest is Stage 4 and what follows: The Wall. Stage 4 is a time of questioning, wondering, doubting and reprocessing much of what’s been learned and done in the previous stages. The Wall is an intense experience of hardship and pain.
These two points are fundamentally different from the previous stages. With broad brush strokes, we can characterize Stages 2-4 in this way: Learning, Doing, Being. Stage 2 is all about learning. It’s taking in content and information about what it means to follow Jesus. Sources like sermons, podcasts, books, mentors and coaches help us to grow radically in our knowledge. Stage 3 is all about doing. Now, we put into practice all we’ve learned. We busy ourselves in service and ministry and kindness to others. But Stage 4 and The Wall are all about being. They are really more about who we are rather than what we know or what we can do. Stage 4 and The Wall represent an intensive time of internal work in which we wrestle with self-identity and self-perception. But it’s only this hard time of internal work that then empowers us to move forward into the final two stages.
For many of us, COVID-19 is Stage 4 and The Wall. Lots of questions are being raised. Lots of pain is being discovered. But, COVID-19 can also be a time of internal work. Though God did not bring this virus upon us, he can use this unique and hard time for us. Allow this to be a time when you focus less on knowing and doing and more on being.
