2020 is certainly a year that no one alive today is likely to forget. Of course the biggest news was the pesky COVID-19 virus that hit our country in March. I’ll speak to that in a few minutes. There have been a few other highlights of this year, some positive rays of light shining on our darkened country. But most of these positive aspects of 2020 have been limited to the personal experience of myself, my family, and my friends, including my church family. Viewing our country as a whole, there hasn’t been much to get very excited about. But for the sake of keeping a positive outlook, I’ll talk about the good things that I appreciate about 2020.
Probably the most exciting thing that happened in 2020 was
the birth of our fifth grandchild. Our oldest daughter Brittney gave birth to a
little girl. As I mentioned in my 2019 Year in Review, I don’t want to put out
too much public information about them because I want to respect my children’s
wishes on how much they share publicly. But I will say that she is precious and
being a grandfather is a great blessing.
There’s an interesting dynamic in becoming a grandfather to
a growing number of grandchildren while still being a father to children at
home. It seems as though, most likely, the days of parenting babies and
toddlers is over. But there are still challenges in raising children who live
at home from the ages of 7 to 19. You’d think I’d have this parenting thing
down pat by now, but the longer I parent the more I realize how much I just don’t
know. To those, including my children, who may be reading this, just know that
I love all my children and I’m doing my best to show that love in the raising
of them. To this day I find it very difficult to strike the balance between
being too strict and too lenient. Maybe, but I doubt it, I’ll figure it out by
the time my youngest flies the coop.
The big news in our church is the acquisition of a new
building. It is much larger than our previous building. It is a blessing to
have enough space to accommodate everyone in the sanctuary without having to
maintain an “overflow” room. There are also a lot more classrooms, making it
easier to have several adult Sunday School classes going on at the same time.
This Lord’s Day TJ Hooser will be teaching, and I’ll be regularly assisting in,
a class on the book of Hebrews. It will be a discussion type of class. It
should be good digging into the Word for about 26 weeks. If you are in the
Oklahoma City area, I’d love to invite you to visit us. Our website has the
address and information about it: http://www.nwbcokc.org
As I mentioned earlier COVID has thrown a wrench into
everyday life. One development that has been positive for me personally is that
since this thing started to grow in March I have been teleworking every day.
This has saved a lot of gas and time and has had the great result of avoiding
the red tape and bureaucracy of traveling to and from a military base every
day. That was a huge reason I left my contracting job there in 2014. Working
from home for the same organization has kept all the benefits while removing
the biggest hassle. I don’t expect teleworking to last forever, but when life
does return back to quasi normal, maybe a consistent partial teleworking
arrangement could be approved.
2020 has seen government overreach unlike I have ever
experienced in my lifetime. The whole “mask mandate” thing has been a textbook
example of government control. The virus has had just enough truth to prevent
it from being viewed as a scam, but the “solution” has been far worse than the
virus itself. Our church did online only services for a few weeks, but that did
not last long. I think, as elders, we saw the light that some arbitrary virus
should not interfere with the worship of our great God. Doing it online is certainly
not the same. I’m pretty sure we are committed not to shuttering our doors anymore
in the future.
The 2020 presidential election was a mess. Calling it
election fraud is an understatement. Trump was winning by a landslide, when in
the middle of the night an avalanche of Biden votes came in from six different
swing states. As of now, it appears that Biden will take control of the office,
and tyranny will grow stronger in America. There is one last bit of hope that Mike
Pence will refuse to count the electoral votes of those states where fraud was
apparent. But it remains to be seen whether he will have the courage to take
such a stand.
I’m going to keep this update short and sweet this year as
there are plenty of other opinions on the sad state of affairs in our country.
2021 should be an interesting year to say the least.
