Is This Time of Calamity a Means of Increased Grace?

As 2020 was approaching, God burdened my heart to pray for clear vision, to pray to have 2020 vision for life. When God stirs your heart it’s exciting and so I waited for the new year with great expectation, anxiously awaiting to see what God would do.
It’s been an interesting start to the year to say the least. There has been a lot of rain for many, enough rain to give you the blues and leave you with a deep longing to see the sun shine again. Enough rain has come that I think we all have a new appreciation for a full day of sunshine.
And now, three months into a new year, a virus has hit the world, causing schools to close, activities to be cancelled, and churches to call off their weekly services. Many are scared and many are wondering what is going on?
I will be honest, I have had to sit back and take a moment to let all of this process, and I am more confident than ever on why God burdened my heart for 2020 vision in 2020. As people, we are highly concerned about what is happening around us, but are we as equally or more concerned about what is going on within us, about what is happening within our hearts?
Never can we fully understand the plans of God or the mind of God, but I do know that God has a desire for our hearts and to restore what sin sought to destroy. He longs to draw us to Himself and have a relationship with Him. As people, we tend to fill our hearts with everything but God, and when calamity hits, we are suddenly aware of the fact that life is temporal and that we do in fact need this God who saves and we do in fact need to call on the name of Jesus.
9/11 will forever be etched in my heart and mind. It’s day that I can never forget. On that day and for many days following that tragic day, many were broken and found themselves humbled and calling out to the God who saves.
Once again, tragedy has struck. Uncertainty and lack of control over what is happening around us has many in panic mode. But has life ever truly been certain? Have we ever really had as much control as we think we had? Life is but a vapor and in times like this we realize how fleeting life really is. We suddenly have a proper perspective. When calamity hits, people begin to realize what really matters and maybe even lead many to a point of seeking the God who saves.
Call me crazy, but when calamity strikes, it as if there is an increased amount of grace that God is bestowing to the world. It’s a means in which God can grab the attention of many and help them see past the temporal and see towards eternity. It’s a means in which He helps them see their need for a Savior and brings them to a point of a soft heart before Him. It’s a means in which God longs to restore vision to the multitudes.
2020 is still the year for clear vision and is still a year in which God is seeking to do great things. Stop looking outward to what is swarming around us all and look inward to what God is desiring to do within the hearts of many all over the world.
Maybe this time of great calamity is a means in which God is longing to bestow increased amount of grace to the multitudes…