Andrea Kyro
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 42
else I can help with. We have been doing
online meetings with the students, services
online, and have even made cards for hos-
pital patients, encouraging them through
the pandemic, yet not being together in per-
son at church….there’s a void in my life
right now that only gathering together in
person with other believers can fill.
The beautiful thing about Christian
community is that, in my own beliefs, God
created us to center on the other person,
and it’s much harder to do when you can’t
physically be with them to pray with them,
hug them and tell them it’s going to be OK,
celebrate and worship with them even.
God created us for community, to be with
and to be for one another, and I realize as
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May / June 2020
this pandemic continues just how much I
took this for granted before the quarantine
began. The saying is so true that “we don’t
know what we have until it’s gone.”
One of the positives I’ve experienced
through the social distancing from my
church family has been seeing Eastside’s
willingness and ability to be flexible and
adapt to the ever changing restrictions
for our community’s overall well-being
with the virus. Our staff and elders’ love
for the people we serve has been felt so
strongly even from afar, with ideas for
how to engage each other online coming so
quickly and their execution thoughtful and
efficient. My heart has been changed sig-
nificantly in this, seeking ways to engage
my freshman life group girls in different
ways while continually being encouraged
by our leadership. We’ve been using dif-
ferent technologies and programs we may
have never sought out and learned how to
use before all of this started.
I know there’s a plan in all of this, I
know that at the end of it all our commu-
nity will come back stronger than ever,
and I’m so ready for that day. What that
plan is? Right now, I honestly couldn’t
tell you. From now until the end of this
we may be able to get glimpses of what
the answer might be to the big question of
“why?”, but from my own experience I’ve
learned that the answer will be revealed to
us in due time. Someday, we will have the
answer, and that’s what I plan on sharing
with future generations. So until that day, I
ask myself, “On the days I feel the lowest,
how can what I’m going through be used
for good?” or the more Jesusy question I
tend to live by, “How can God use this time
for good before He removes it?”