Message in the Malady

This time of a global pandemic has been described as a "wake-up call," and we see from Scripture that God calls us to be vigilant - He wants us to wake up to what He has to teach us.  Romans 13
says:
10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
11 And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.

If we are going to wake up, we have to consider what we are going to do once we are awake.  Once we wake up, we are to get up, and our motivation is to walk in the love of Christ.  So, we can consider how we are going to receive and relate His love today.  We show we love God by obeying Him, and we know that our trials can used to purify us, to expose our sin and darkness, and to discover more about the light.  So, we wake up, get up, and, as Captain America would say, "suit up," putting on Christ and radiating His glory.

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Jesus is actively working in our world today, and there are signs that are pointing to His soon return. It is quite possible the Coronavirus is one of those. And, this season can certainly help us look to
Him day by day. In Matthew 24, He teaches:
4 ..."Take heed that no one deceives you.
5 For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.
6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

There is an abundance of theories regarding the overall effect of the Coronavirus - there, of course, are the medical statistics that show the number of cases, based on limited testing, as well as the number of deaths either directly caused by COVID-19 or that have occurred in people who have tested positive and that are being counted as Corona deaths.  You also have the projections of the economic damage and you are seeing reports of the psychological damage that may be coming.

And, as I have reported to you, there are some studies that have attempted to gauge the spiritual impact.  One comes out of the University of Chicago Divinity School and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.  An article at the Forbes website reported on the findings.

Most of the just over a thousand respondents, who are Americans, said they saw a deeper meaning in the crisis.  The article states: "Some 63% of the believers surveyed said they think God is telling humanity to change the way they are living, with Evangelical Protestants the most likely to believe that strongly compared to mainline Protestants and Catholics."

Other factoids from the survey include:

• While the vast majority of respondents chalked up the situation to either foreign governments or the U.S. government (43% and 37%, respectively), about one in 10 directly attribute the pandemic to human sinfulness.

• More than half of those surveyed said they felt God would protect them from infection, though 9% say God has abandoned humanity.

And, there was a slight uptick in the number of people who indicated that they now believe in God; the story relates: "The virus has prompted some Americans to reevaluate their beliefs, with 2% of respondents saying that they believe in God today, but did not before the pandemic and less than 1% reporting that it caused them to abandon their beliefs."

This poll was taken April 30-May 4, almost a month ago, but at that time, according to the University's website, "...the poll finds that only 9% of Americans think in-person religious services should continue without any restrictions. The poll also finds that 42% of Americans think those services should be allowed with restrictions, while 48% are in favor of disallowing such services entirely during the pandemic."  But two-thirds are OK with people visiting public areas such as parks and beaches, albeit with restrictions.

So, is there a hidden meaning here?  It has been debated whether or not God has unleashed this virus on the world as a form of punishment or judgment - we certainly see that plagues were used for these purposes in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, as Jimmy DeYoung pointed out early on to us, Jesus taught that there would be an uptick in plagues during the time before His coming.

We may not have the answer to those questions, but we can certainly know that God is at work in the midst of this, as He is in the trials we face.  The Coronavirus has been regarded as a wake-up call, as two-thirds of the religious "believers" in the survey can attest, but we can also ask to what we are waking up. I certainly think we can adopt a "we'll get through this" or "this too shall pass" mentality, but there may be more in store.  We can move from just getting by to getting schooled by the Spirit; in other words, this is a teachable moment, and perhaps God is calling us to change - it may be a newfound reliance on Him, a realization that this world is fragile and we should not trust in in it, and/or that our lives need to be simplified.

I believe the pandemic is not, as less than 10% in this survey indicated, a testimony to the absence of God.  I think this gives us an opportunity to rediscover the presence of God and intensify our dependence on Him.  And, we can determine, through careful prayer and study of the Word, what God wants to teach us.