Every generation has faced fears and uncertainty. While the COVID-19 challenge may seem extreme to us, it’s not all that different from the feelings and fears our forefathers and many generations before us have had to face. If anything, our challenge may be considered quite mild compared to what many before us have had to overcome. It may be, we are giving this virus and the fears pushed by the media way too much authority over our lives.
It would be valuable for us to remember, at the end of the day, we are not in control. God directs our steps, and He is the master and author of our story.
We could still find joy within this time of despair if we would only submit and fully trust in Him. If we would believe He loves us and has a plan for our lives and our future. We should also remember we are not destined to live in this present world forever. All men and women must die. It has been appointed for us to do so.
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27 KJV
However, the good news is, we may live yet again, for all eternity, if we put our trust in the wonderful Saviour, Jesus the Messiah.
We must learn to be grateful and content regardless of our situation. As stated by the great Apostle Paul, who knew all too well what it was like to suffer, yet he never lost faith in Messiah. He finished the race strongly, and so must we.
“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Philippians 4:11-13 KJV
Recently my church pastor shared a quote from the great C. S. Lewis, written in the year 1948. In his day many people were terrified of the newly invented atomic bomb. World War 2 had just come to an end and the cold war had begun. There was much fear and uncertainty around the world. His words to that generation sound as if they could be written for us today.
A quote, written by C.S. Lewis, in the year 1948.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
May we not live our day in fear and in despair, much of which is irrational, to begin with. May we trust in our God and not in the words and wisdom of fools, especially those speaking through our television screens and those on social media who regurgitate them. Rather, let us be of good cheer, Jesus has overcome the world, and we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us and nothing can separate us from His love. Finally, may this great crisis bring with it a great revival and a movement back towards the one true God.
“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39 KJV
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Thank you, GOD bless you!