We simply aren't used to being at home this much. As a friend of mine said, we are great at binge-watching anything but our kids. She meant that home, over time, has become a secondary place for us. After all, most of our waking hours are spent at work. But now the two have merged. And what if that's what it was all about? Not an idolization of "family," but home as the place where we learn to love as God invites us to love the world.

People are experiencing and reporting higher and higher degrees of loneliness and disconnection — even as we spend more and more time with fewer people in our homes. Part of our loneliness is our general disconnection. Even before COVID-19, our lives mostly moved around one another rather than toward one another. Add to that increasing division via social media and we are not only disconnected, but contemptuous to our relationships.

This week, Pastor Sean introduces three powerful questions that the Apostle Paul revealed while he was locked away at home that will help make your relationships more whole.

When you're stuck at home it's easy to feel stuck. Add to that the chorus of voices in our culture saying that quarantine is the perfect time to finally write your book, launch a business, develop a new hobby, plus the opposing voices that remind us that we are in the middle of a pandemic and that just living through it all and maintaining our sanity is an accomplishment and it all equates to confusion.

But what if God is up to something powerful in the midst of us all staying-at-home? What if we are being invited to encounter the world differently, and the only way God could encourage us to embrace a great reboot was a complete shutdown?

Mother’s Day is this weekend. And while Mother’s Day is not on the Liturgical Calendar, mothering is a calling, task, sacrifice, and surrender unlike few others. Regardless of who we are, through the hardships, joys, beauty and pain someone somewhere has mothered us. God, in fact describes God’s care and redirection as a mother. This week, we enter into mothering, a task that couldn’t be more opposite than distancing, and we see God mother us in love in the midst of it all.

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then right now we have never been more fond of our friends. Many of us are discovering that we may have taken our friendship for granted or didn't appreciate them as much as we should. And maybe that's because friendship requires more of us than we've ever admitted. What if being a friend — a true friend — is more than hanging out and convenience, but rooted in covenant and commitment?

Are you sensing that you need your friends and deeper friendships more now than ever before? Maybe you find yourself appreciating your existing relationships in ways you never thought you would. The scriptures call us to a kind of loving and relating with one another that is expansive and beyond what most people know and experience. In times of distancing, we need one another more than ever. Maybe the opportunity in this season is for you to lean in to bolder, deeper, more rewarding friendships.

We live - and have lived for a long while - in an age and culture of fear. Right now, with every day bringing us more and more fear-inducing news, it's almost impossible to not be afraid. But how do we approach and handle our fear? With shame? With embrace? And how do we walk the people closest to us through their fear? In this episode, we come close to the hope of Easter while living with very human fears.

We know more about more than ever before. We are constantly drawn to the busyness and hurriedness of life. All that busyness conspires to make us less-aware people. That lack of awareness is at the heart of disenchantment and relational distance. In the midst of a pandemic, with news constantly changing, we have never been more informed. But informed is not the same thing as aware. How often do we pause to consider what's right in front of us? What if a blessing of this really painful time is God's ability to bring forward our deep inattentiveness to the people God has given us to love and care for? What in your life would change if you were able to pay attention?

Ferris was right, "life moves pretty fast," until it doesn't. In the midst of a pandemic, one of the first things we notice is that life doesn't always move that fast. Maybe we've been trained to move fast, but what does that speed mean? What does it do to us? What if we have been living at a pace that fundamentally disconnects from our deeper wants, truer selves, and the people God has given us?

Around the world governments and health experts are urging people to #stayhome, and Shelter-In-Place orders are given every day. The world is facing a pandemic few of us were prepared to face. While we love our families, we are not accustomed to being with the same people 24/7. What if the greatest temptation is not what we think it is? What if the greatest temptation isn't being with one another, but to abandon one another even while we're in their presence?

COVID-19 is presenting us all with challenges and obstacles we could never have imagined. We are now forced into new realities; relational, financial, emotional, and spiritual. For followers of Jesus, how do we hold this space with life, grace, and perhaps more importantly, peace? This week, we take a look at time, and how Israel’s greatest leader, Moses, can guide us.