by Jason Hamilton
The Coronavirus has dominated the news the past several weeks. Its spread has shut down or slowed down virtually everything. If ever we stared the “unknown” in the face, it is now. The world, the whole world, is in a panicked state. I was at Wal-Mart when the doors opened on a Friday morning. There was a line (seriously) I was early enough to get two packages of toilet paper because, lets face it, there are five women in my house and two is just standard. I was only allowed one. Panic. It was once said that faith and fear are opposites. When you fear you are not exercising faith and when we are demonstrating faith, fear is cancelled out. We can see that panicking is driven by fear and we know that it doesn’t demonstrate trust. So, how do we think about and respond to this very unique time?
1. Walking through Wal-Mart is a theological test. What I mean is that do we trust God for our supply? Moses reminds the children of Israel on the backside of their 40 years of wilderness wandering in Deuteronomy 8:18:
You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
God is the source of all we need. He’s the power to get wealth. My job, my cart of stuff at the store is a reminder of the power of God. We, believers in Christ, need not panic when we don’t get what we think we need.
2. There’s a balance between trusting God’s sovereignty over this whole situation and being obedient and acting. Billions of birds are on the planet and He knows when each one falls. He knows how many hairs are on the heads of billions of people on the planet. He’s orchestrated plagues and famine as a demonstration of His glory for a very long time:
Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it? Amos 3:6b
Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Lamentations 3:37-38
I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things. Isaiah 45:7
In fact, Job corrected his wife’s poor response to their losses. She wanted Job to curse God and die. He had lost all of his wealth, all of his children, and was near dying as his health was in major decline. How’d he correct her?
But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”Job 2:10a
As unpopular as the notion of God orchestrating calamity is, the second half of that verse says that Job didn’t sin by responding this way. We can rest in the worst of times because God, the trustworthy, faithful, loving God sovereignly acts over the good and the bad, over darkness and light, over good circumstances as well as calamitous ones. The key for us is to act with some wisdom (seeing as the virus is passed through social interaction) and trusting that our Lord is Lord of the gems and the germs.
3. Hope holds up the arms of victory. It is projected that about half of Americans are going to end up with this virus and some who get it are going to die from it. Even if half of us don’t and this is a lot of media hype we still need to evaluate our hope in the face of the possibility of dying prematurely. I think this has struck me more lately than anything else. Music is piped through speakers at work. My boss put the speakers at my work station and asked what kind of music I wanted to listen to. It hit me that I would love to listen to Matt Papa and Matt Boswell. In a very rare and unique situation I sang “His Mercy is More” twice that morning. Unfortunately, another assembly area turned up their country music after a while. I realized then and it still sits with me, that because of the resurrection I have a real, serious, eternal hope. Secular music pales in comparison because there is no saturation in resurrection. No hope. The words of Jesus have been more real to me than ever:
Jesus said to her [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26
I don’t want to say that my believing has just been theoretical up until now but it certainly feels more real. There is a certain hope and its not found in rushing the toilet paper aisle at Wal-Mart. It would be wise to ask what Jesus asked: Do you believe this? In the face of death (real or perceived) do you believe that dying is just a stepping stone for the person who has faith in Christ?