I learned a new word today. Well it’s a concept wrapped in a word actually. The word is druxy. Its pronounced druck-see. It means to have rotten spots concealed by good wood. In other words it means a cover up. Who of us is not a cover up at least in part? I have a few spots rotting away here and there. And all my friends do too, I can see them. It’s not the spots that present the worst aspect of the problem it’s the cover up that is the worst to deal with.

The news is filled with economic reports that really aren’t good today. I can’t remember it being this bad except maybe in ’73 when unemployment was 12%. And ’87 was far more sudden and horrifying. This has been a slow slide that gets steeper by the day.

I don’t know anyone that feels unscathed by all this.

But it is a druxy situation. The rotten wood always shows when for some reason the finish wood gets pulled back. And that is exactly what has occurred. It would be nice if it helped to point a finger and show fault. But the truth is we all kind of participated in this thing. Some are guiltier than others but our charade has been found out. How could houses continue to go up 20% a year without trouble on the horizon?

But a new era has come. I think it will be better. Isaiah talked about occasions like this when he said (Isa. 43:18-19) “Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold I do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it…” Sometimes things just require a new thing. I suspect the way we do church will be affected as well as how we do business.

God does a new thing when it’s needed. Meaning he starts all over again. I went to a Red Robin restaurant a few months back. I had a long wait so I went into the little video game room. It was packed with about a dozen Hispanic kids shouting and pounding on the machines. Soon it was my turn. I started to play but was losing badly about as fast as I started. One of the kids said, “man just push the reset button you’re not getting out of this one!”

Sometimes all you can do is push the button and start over. I thought of something today as well. We think of God often as the fixer. We ask him to fix this and to fix that. He may do this but I don’t think that is the way he really works. God is a creator not a fixer.

He is creating a whole new thing. You just watch. It will be better. It will be a refreshing powerful start in a new way. It will be of his creation and work. Looking back and begging for business as usually doesn’t get it done.

It is necessary for us to believe that the reset button will work for us. You have to be able to trust Him that he is who He is. We usually stumble at the trust factor because we measure God’s concern by our own. Jeremiah (31; 3) blasts out at us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” We can never understand that kind of love because we are not eternal.

You can trust Him just by knowing He cares in ways that are beyond our understanding. When the heat is on we learn this level of concern by God. Panic is the absence of trust in God. Grabbing for the reset button just might get you ready for the new thing. Correction is the natural cycle of life. I am not a fan of Hegel but history is moving somewhere. It’s moving to Him. He will sum it all up. I see times like these as practice for the big test.

One author who has become a friend has said, “We substituted thinking for knowing.” Computers have taught us to think well. But what do we really know. Knowing is something that comes through the fight. I know because I know because I have lived it.

Thinking can be an important but passive exercise. You may say I thought this or that. But you may not know it.

Times of pressure and stress increase the knowing. It may even turn our dispassionate thinking into knowing. It is true without challenges that build our life muscles we would know very little. I have grown to know God through the heat. And this season is not unlike all others that have increased my personal knowing of Him and life.

So chill. It will be better and new. It will be happy and joyous. And we will know a whole lot more than we have. Just remember the reset button when it gets scary.