#2020 – Nancy Aziz's Blog

Family trips cancelled. Birthday celebrations postponed. Planning for the rest of the year and 2021 practically impossible. I recently came across a tweet that read, “I’m not buying a 2021 planner until I see a trailer.”

The pandemic has brought about a loss of any sense of certainty in what tomorrow might bring. Two questions come to mind. Did we ever have an absolute sense of certainty in the pre-COVID-19 era? Did we ever have a trailer of even what the next hour, not year, might bring? And why does it seem like we need some type of certainty to live sane lives?

If I haven’t totally confused you yet, let’s try to unpack these questions together.

New Year’s Resolutions. A phrase you read and hear often this time of year. But the connotation this phrase relays to you depends on the kind of year 2019 has been for you. Do you look back with a sense of accomplishment and look forward with a sense of hope? Or does 2019 carry its share of pain and despair, casting a gloomy shadow upon 2020?

But what is it that we look for when we look back to “grade” 2019? Could it be that our grading scale is off scale? How do we define accomplishment? What would make us “feel good?” And is it about “feeling good?” I’m sure you’d agree with me that feelings often go as quickly as they come, leaving us empty, so what does a “good year” look like? For those of us who are Christians, we may define a good year as one that is in accordance to God’s will. But that brings us back to a similar question: What does a year in accordance to God’s will look like?