There is currently so much uncertainly gripping the world right now. Will I get sick? Will my loved ones die from this? How can I afford to pay my bills? Will my business survive this mess? When will I get to go outside again? When will that next batch of masks and PPE arrive? Will I die while trying to take care of those who are critically ill in hospital? Those are just some of the questions I know are plaguing people’s minds right now. There is this incredible fear that I am seeing that has swept across nations across every corner of the globe, and it blankets almost all humans imaginable.
I see people in India who were walking on their feet for 12 days straight with their toddler children to try to get home to food and shelter, because public transport is no longer running, then dying of starvation before they reached there. I see doctors and nurses who are sleeping on the grass outside the hospital because they are too afraid to go home, in fear that they will infect their families. I see parents crying because they lose their daughter to the virus, while she was just trying to do her job of scanning groceries for people who need those said supplies. I see bodies being bagged in the hundreds upon hundreds in a single 24 hour period for weeks on end. The sheer horror that this pandemic has gripped the world with, has been horrific on so many levels. If we haven’t been affected on the extreme end like this, I know most have been hit by the anxiety of the uncertain future ahead of us.
Never have I seen anything hurt the world on such a widescale manner, with such speed in my life.
When this pandemic started, I’ll admit that I went into panic mode and freaked out. There were nights I could not sleep because of the paralysing worry that came from all the weddings that started to be cancelled or moved for the foreseeable future. I’ll tell you now, the fear got the better of me. It’s really hard to hold your composure when you have what your security depends on pulled from right under you. And I say this as a Christian, whom knows her security comes from God. Yet this virus has shown how far my idols hid in my closet, and how deep my sin lived in the marrow of my bones.
The world has told us – Stay home. Wash your hands. Sanitise. Be thoroughly clean. Disinfect everything. Those are the constant messages bombarding us from every direction media can throw at us. Even my phone network symbol has changed to messages about this to remind us to take these measures seriously and regularly.
But what if more than just our hands needed cleansing? What if more than just our homes needed an overall sanitising?
Over the last few weeks while in lockdown, I have noticed the washing of our very existence as humans. The resetting and restarting of so many things in people’s lives all over the world. People are going back to basics that they never had time for before this whole pandemic took over. Whole countries have had their lives stopped or quietened down enough to be able to see above the cloud of busyness and just life, to be able to recognise things they are grateful for. Such as being able to obtain simple grocery supplies. The appreciation for the simplest of connection even if its over zoom. The acknowledgement of how important professions such as doctors and nurses are – jobs that were often overlooked and taken for granted before. We’ve seen blue skies in places never seen for decades before, and nature returning to places that drove them away. There’s been time to read, to sleep, to disconnect from the constant noise and busyness or exhaustion that crowned our day in an day out. Even the most elemental of things like a handshake, or a hug, have been missed and noticed by so many.
As I took a step back and looked reflected on the global situation, I realised while I was still scared, I also saw all the good God is and has been working in all of this.
1) Firstly, God has forced the world to stop. He’s paused the extreme busyness that has clouded alot of our lives in pursuit for hustle and money. If left to our own devices, I know none of us would have chosen this. So I am so grateful for this time to halt. It’s given us eyes to see better than we have in a long time. To focus on what matters. To be able to have the space to hear the good news of His son and actually receive it with an open heart.
2) God is showing us where our trust and our idols live – I’ll admit, I thought I was doing okay as a Christian before this, but this pandemic has shown the depths of where I actually put my trust (money and my job), and where my sins still need alot of work – In isolation with my family, I have gotten cranky and angry unreasonably, I have yelled, I have been lazy and put myself first, and there have been days where I know I did not model the grace of God to my family when I know I should have. In the world, I have seen the stripping away of things that have taken up our love and our time such as international sports and major entertainment events. With the lack of these distractions, its shifted our focus to other things – back to things that we would not have been seen otherwise.
And lastly…
3) God is at work in the global church to get His beautiful message of the gospel out louder and clearer than perhaps it has ever been heard and preached before. Tell me, would you have been willing to listen to what God had to say if we weren’t in this pandemic? If you were not brought to your knees? If we weren’t locked up in our homes with no where to go and no people to hang out with?
We have just come out of Easter weekend – a weekend that celebrates the good news of eternal life and indestructible hope which Jesus paid for with his life. He conquered death and became sin for all, so that we might be called children of God – He gives this freely to ANY who are willing to hear him and accept Him. It is a hope that disarms the sting of death, and while we may be in isolation and unable to go out, what Jesus did on the cross gives us a freedom and a peace that even the Coronavirus cannot take away. I heard a pastor preach on the weekend via youtube and he said – Death is not the end, because Jesus has conquered death so death no longer has its forever hold on us, and we are no longer in the hopeless bondage of our greatest problem of sin. He said, imagine the freedom you’ll feel to be able to walk out of your home after all this is over. Well, the freedom and the hope Jesus wants to give you is better than that by 1000 fold because it unshakeable and certain, and nothing can take it away from you once you accept him.
So when this is all over, yes, things are terrible right now, and there is much suffering and pain, but when this is done and past, I pray that we are able to not only see the blessings that we have taken for granted clearer. But that the iron grip of fear and anxiety no longer render us hopeless. Instead, more importantly I pray it gives us goggles that embrace the free hope of Eternal life and eternal hope and eternal freedom that God is holding out to all of us in all of this. May we take it, and welcome it, and run with it so that we might be able to enjoy this incredible gift with a joy and a fire that lights your whole life for the entire world to see.
Let the Life Giver give you true Life. Let Him give you true joy. Let Him give you true peace. and let Him give you a future that is certain and glorious, and better than anything you’ve ever known – if not in this life, it’s definite and assured in the eternal one that is to come.
For it is said “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and your staff they comfort me” – Psalm 23:4.
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