Response to covid 19

Hello again, and welcome to a post which is not what the name suggests.

This is not about covid 19, there are thousands upon thousands of people who have already spoken about that, and I am in no way qualified to do so. This post is quite literally about the RESPONSE to covid 19… our response as humans, and in particular the response of Christians to this crisis.

I am going to start out by saying that this is meant to be a positive post in a worried world. I could easily fill this space with criticism of toilet-paper hoarders, or all the people who continue to refuse to social distance, despite stay at home orders. I could write about that, and it IS important to acknowledge that we need to do better… but that’s not what I want to talk about right now.

I, like pretty much everyone else, have read about plagues, pandemics, and global/Country-wide disasters, (wars and economic ruin come to mind,) and like most people, I never had any desire to live in those times, and although I knew that a big war could come, I never expected to live through a pandemic… “in this day and age.” None of us know how to respond to this, and that’s scary, but if you study history as I do, you may note that during huge problems, people change, and that has always fascinated me, and now I can see it myself. And as many other Children’s Church children I never quite grasped what “God isn’t in the event, He’s in the response” meant… Until now.

Among all this uncertainty, worry, and upset, there is a spirit of hope. You can see it when people make masks to help fill that growing need, when online businesses start running sales to keep you home, (is this a marketing tactic? Yes, but in the same way, that chicken-feed sellers started selling feed in printed bags so that mothers could clothe their children without as much shame, during the Great Depression… Look it up!) You can see it when people reach out to their elderly relatives when they might not otherwise do so. People are working on making sure that their friends are sane, and just being kind when they may otherwise be too distracted to do so. All the time now, I see posts from people who want to help and let’s be honest, that doesn’t happen as much in a normal year. Individuals and even businesses are going above and beyond, and that is, dare I say, beautiful.

What about the Church? For my Church at least, we have been using this time to praise God’s power above everything else, to refine ourselves and to remember that God is all-knowing. He WILL do what is right, even if we don’t understand the timing. It’s easier than normal to see our need for an all-knowing, loving God, and that we all, Christians and non-believers alike, need the hope right now that only God can provide and that is amazing.

We may not know the way through this, but God does, and that is incredibly awe-striking, humbling, and just peace-filling. 

We’re all imagining what we’ll do when we’re “free” again right now, and I think that is quite natural, but I can’t help wondering if we can “break” history a bit, and work on keeping this goodwill going, even after we can go back to our lives; if we can actually grow through this terrible tragedy, and whether we will be able to remember the way we worried about our fellow men, as well as the pain when we look back on this year.

Thanks for reading, 

Stay safe, 

And keep loving.