When it comes to doing church in our culture, one very strange but true observation can be made: it’s amazing how much we can do without God.

When you have access to financial resources, a decent building, good sound equipment and a preacher who can either stir the crowd up or make them feel good, you can do quite a lot without ever involving God in the process.

I’m sure we’ve all been deluged with opinions on how to survive the long drudgery of this pandemic.

There’s no doubt it has taken a toll. Every public opinion survey you read and every mental health professional you talk to will tell you not only how hard it’s been on people but how long it’s going to take to dig countless millions out of the abyss of hopelessness, anxiety and despair.

I don’t have any great answers other than depending on the fact that God is faithful and will help those who call on him.

But I do have one small suggestion to offer. It’s what I call the next step. Just look at what’s in front of you now.

Friendship is a highly underrated theological category. We spiritualize our relationships in church by calling each other brother and sister. We formalize our relationships in church by calling each other pastor, bishop, apostle and goodness knows what else.

But Jesus brought it right down to ground level: “I have called you my friends.” That’s why the Quakers called their movement the “Society of Friends.” Maybe they had a point.

I was thinking the other day of a battle I won simply because I didn’t fight it.

More than once, I had been sorely tempted to wade into the fray on my own behalf. After all, in my thinking, I had been badly treated. Why shouldn’t I feel free to point it out or do something about it?

Every time I got to that point, the Lord arrested me. If my life belongs to him, then so do all my battles. When I get involved, I never know how much of my cause is really just, and how much is my own injured pride or self-interest.

A scene that unfolded as I looked out our patio doors this week pretty much summed up the last year. The people building a house on the vacant lot adjacent to us for no apparent reason obliterated a number of beautiful hundred year old trees that were a blaze of colour every October.

I might as well say it — I was angry. I felt — and was — helpless to prevent something that shouldn’t have happened. And that, I think, is how a lot of us feel processing the events of these past months.