[Darris McNeely] In recent days, a new variant of the COVID virus has been detected called the Omicron. When I first read the report about it, it was detected in South Africa. Immediately, European nations, even the United States, then put a ban on people flying into those areas from South Africa. And I thought, "Oh, South Africa doesn't deserve that. Just because they identified, it, found it in their population, they get whacked with travel ban for people from their areas." It's just unfortunate. I know a lot of people in South Africa. They are very party, brave people. The south Africans actually performed the first heart transplant back in the mid-1960s. They had made contributions to sport, to technology, and it was their epidemiologists that detected this Omicron virus. To slap bands immediately on them, I thought was a little bit of piling on, but that's just my opinion. I know a lot of people there, as I said, and they're good people.

The South Africans have a quality that I like to refer to as resilience, resilience. They have been resilient over many years, all segments of that society and even in some of their current problems today, but for you and I, as we look at where we are in this COVID situation and the, you know, the concern in some quarters of a new variant and possibly another one could be detected in a few months, we don't know, we've lived through now two variants, the Delta and the Omicron of that, we are, kinda, doing what they call crisis surfing in this. Just when you think it's over, something else comes up to create concern, anxiety throughout the population. The drum beats louder in media and government circles and other areas. Meanwhile, life has to go on, and we have to live our lives, and we should, and we do while we maintain our vigilance and take proper precautions in every way possible and what is available to us based on our choice.

But I think that this one point about resilience is what all of us are going to have to learn to develop. Resilience is an interesting quality. It's the ability to bounce back from a problem. To get ourselves back on our two feet and move forward when we may hit a crisis in our personal life or something comes upon us. We've had to learn resilience during the recent pandemic when things happen in our lives, don't go the way we think, we have setbacks. We have to be resilient. We have to keep moving forward, we have to go back to work, we have to live, we have to reengage after a period of time. Resilience is a very, very important personal quality that you don't get a lot of press about.

I do have one book on my shelf by that particular title, which offers some very interesting stories to help us understand what resilience is, but if you haven't thought about that in the light of the ongoing COVID crisis, understand that it's something that all of us need to surf the crisis that keep coming to us.

There is a scripture that I think helps us to focus on this from scripture. It's in Matthew 11:28-30. I think it is a key to building resilience through a trusting relationship with God. Christ makes a statement there when He says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." The yoke that Jesus refers to joins us with Him in a partnership to move forward, to plow that furl, to stay focused in life moving straight ahead to the goal.

When we yoke ourselves with Christ, then we have the ability to be resilient through that type of relationship, a spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ himself, the head of this church. Resilience is something we're all going to have to, kind of, study, think about, and work through during these times, and if we do, anchoring it in a relationship with Christ, there's every reason to hope that we can move forward and deal with everything that comes our way and move forward with a positive approach to life.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.