Pride…or Obedience?

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 ESV

As I write this commentary, my society here in America is in the cold, dark depths of the Coronavirus outbreak. Times are frightening, and things may not improve for weeks or months. Medical supplies, the tools our healthcare ‘troops’ use to fight this invisible enemy, are in critically short supply. Testing materials, physical protection equipment, are all being used up at phenomenal rates, with no supplies left with which to replace them. Respirators in particular, which can under the right circumstances carry us through the hardest hours of an infection, are very hard to come by, and some of us are using the shortage to generate increased profit. “Supply and demand”, don’t ya know?

We are physically separated from one another, one in every six of us has lost his or her job, around us our economy crumbles away, and all we can do is watch it go. And be afraid. Many of us can’t pay our bills, may not have jobs to go back to when this is eventually over, and through no fault of our own face the loss of everything we have built for ourselves; our home, career, possessions, whatever ease of life we have been able to scratch out. Waves of stress pound on our rocky cliffs like never before, and as we stand on that precipice with nothing else to do with our time but watch, too many of us feel like the earth under our feet is turning wet, slippery, beginning to give way to those waves.

This feels……..biblical, in its scope.

Jesus’ words in John are hard words to live by, especially in times like now, when a few days from today any one of us could really, truly face the gut-wrenching choice of ‘do I go on a respirator, or allow someone else to take that slot?’.

What does my faith require of me? What might my Lord and my King want from His servant? 

We can debate who is a ‘friend’ in the eyes of the Lord. It’s also important to point out that Jesus doesn’t command this, He merely states it. But there it is, nonetheless.

I think the question every person of faith needs to consider is, ultimately….how will you live out your faith? Is God more important than your own life? Your life has always been in God’s hands, and surely if He wishes He can save you through the fire, respirator or no. The Bible shows us this. But this choice is at the heart of Christian faith. Is me first, you next…acceptable?

How will you choose to understand Job 13:15? “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.”‬ ‭ESV‬‬  It’s not honest to just look at the first part of that verse, and ignore the last. Will you trust God all the way to death and beyond? Or will you argue with God, protesting your innocence before Him and disagreeing with His perfect will?  God never directly responded to Job’s arguments, He just forcefully reminded him which of them was God and which was not.

What do you take from that? If God allows you to become infected, will you choose to potentially save your own life, or potentially save someone else’s? A terrible choice to face to be sure, but it could happen. For some of us, it will happen. Your own life over another’s? Or faith in God’s saving hand, His miracles?

Even in the theoretical, that choice looms. The boastful pride of life…or sacrificial obedience?

From the Heart

In these fright-filled times, I find myself with more names on my prayer list than I’ve had before, as people I care about (and people I’ve only heard about from others) are faced with pretty daunting challenges, which I want to ask God to help, or protect. Sometimes -hopefully- these people face the kind of hardships that only come along once in a lifetime.

But what are we really doing, when we pray for someone? Do we just recite their name, and ask God to intervene on their behalf, and move on, content that we’ve “done something”? Sent “thought and prayers”, as politicians seem so fond of doing these days? I believe there may be more involved than just this.

This isn’t Biblical, merely my conjecture. But the God of the Bible is said to be a relational God; that is, He wants to be in a relationship with His children. So it follows, in my mind, that He wants more from prayer than a mere reading, a listing, a recitation of names and needs. I believe He wants heartfelt caring, a deep concern, for the subjects we are bringing before Him. I think He wants us to feel pain or need or joy or love for the person or the need we are praying for. Roll them around in our heart, take a few seconds to feel about them, to remember the emotion we have for them, as we lift them up to bring the attention of Almighty God upon them. Keep in mind, He already knows all about that person or that situation, because of course, He is El Roi. He knows the end from the beginning and all things in between. So we bring no news to Him. The only thing we bring to God when we pray…is our caring.

I believe that’s also why He wants worship first, because He wants us to care about Him, to recognize that He exists, that He loves us and we Him, and while He is the God of all the majesties of the universe, He knows and cares about each of us individually. We have that bond with our Creator.

So when we pray, I think God wants us to pray not just with our mind, with our thoughts, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, He wants us to pray with our heart. He wants us to care about the things we pray and talk to Him about, even as He cares about us.

You Have A Purpose

If you are a believer in Almighty God, then there are some truths that flow from that.

He chose to put you on the Earth during this difficult and scary time. He had a reason why He did that. He put you where you are, right now, among the people that you know, and who know you. He has a purpose in mind for you.

So talk with Him. Spend some time in prayer, and let the Holy Spirit guide you. Maybe your purpose isn’t to save the world, maybe it’s just to plant a seed in someone’s heart. Or maybe your purpose is to water a seed that someone else planted. Maybe it’s a small act of kindness, to someone who’s silently, desperately seeking a sign of His love. Maybe it’s to let your guard down, so He can bless you with assistance from someone so they can learn what it feels like to be the hands and the feet of Christ.

Whatever it is, be open to it. Be willing to be used, by the God that chose to put you in this place, at this time, for a purpose.

The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic

As I write this, it is late March, 2020. It’s been a while since I last shared my thoughts. And If the truth be told, it’s been a depressing few years, here in the desert. My life has taken some turns which I would not have wished for; the job I now have is not the one I was hired for, almost two years ago. Over the intervening span of time, it has been changed, tiny bit by tiny bit. The conditions under which I am required to perform it continue to become more demanding, and I have had to learn to live with the repeated threat of it being taken away from me if I do not find a way to do it both faster and more perfectly. Soon I expect I will be required to work from home. I have not had to do this before, and I resent being forced to allow my work to intrude into my home, my sanctuary, my retreat. This will make it even more difficult to do this job.

And yet, I name the Name of God, and try to live my life as my Master tells me to. I fail, of course, but I am forgiven. I have accepted this disappointing chapter in my life because it is a tenet of my faith that God is in control, and He has a plan for me. Since time began, He knew I would be working here, at this time in my life, at this time in the lives of those around me, and in the history of my country and my planet. And so my faith requires me to believe that, like Joseph and Paul and Daniel, I must walk the sometimes-difficult path which has been set before me by my King, and find a way to live as He commands, or as closely to it as I can manage, so that I may be obedient to Him and to bring him such glory as I am able. So I do my best to accept it, and pray every day for His Will to be done in me, and through me, and not my own will.

Some times, some very dark and very early mornings, that prayer is harder to pray in my heart than at other times, other brighter, sunnier afternoons.

I recently came to realize that as miserable as this job is, at least I still have one. Right now the Coronavirus Pandemic, CoVid-19, has gripped the world. It swirls invisibly around us, threatening us, intimidating us with it’s unknown aspect. Because of the nature of the infection, and because of the poor choices of our current President, Donald Trump, we have wasted 2 months of valuable time, and are just now beginning -beginning- to prepare for this test of our nation which is already upon us, and among us. We are being told to practice something entirely new: Social Distancing. I suspect as you read this in the weeks and months to come, you will be quite familiar with it, but right now, it’s new, and we are as a nation (and a world) grappling with how to wrap and bend and twist and wrench our lives around it. We are, many of us, finding ways to adapt to the idea of spending week after week after week, stretching into an unknown number of months ahead, physically separated from other human beings.

No gatherings of more than 50 people are allowed, and most recently even groups larger than 10 people are being discouraged – or simply prevented form occurring at all by police and authorities, depending on which city or state you happen to live in. This means no professional baseball, basketball, hockey, no March Madness, no audiences at TV shows, no evening news teams on the same set with each other. It means many, many radio and TV programs are being broadcast by formerly high-gloss hosts and anchors and reporters from their basements, or their living rooms, or their kitchen tables.  No schools, no high school proms, no graduations, no St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. In many states most places where people formerly gathered like bars, restaurants, stores, coffee shops and clubs are all but closed. Stores limit the number of patrons who can be inside to handfuls at a time. Restaurants and dining establishments offer drive-thru and pick-up orders only; their lobbies are locked, the tables and chairs stacked mutely in the corner, or out of sight entirely. Businesses large and small will go under. And the people who formerly staffed these places, stocked the storerooms, waited on customers, rang up their purchases, cleared their tables and cleaned their glasses…they don’t have jobs anymore. By the grace of God…I do.

But despite all of this….we have yet to see the full effects of the virus. Statistics guess that before the virus is through with us, maybe a month or more from now, perhaps as many as two-thirds or more of America will eventually become infected. Due to timing and luck, I am in one of the most at-risk categories: 60 or older, with underlying health issues. These same statistics estimate that the vast majority of folk in my group will survive. But approximately seventeen out of every hundred will not.

That’s a frightening percentage. The kind that can keep you awake at night.

I’m used to seeing odds expressed in chances of winning the contest as one in a million or a hundred million….not in seventeen out of every one hundred other humans just like me – gone.

No funerals, either.

Part of me wonders what life will be like over the weeks and months to come, as Spring slowly turns to Summer, because that’s how I’m wired. I want to learn new things, to watch history unfold. How will our government adapt to this New Reality? How will we? What will go back to “normal”…and what will not? I’m on the front lines again, as I was for Watergate, and 9/11, and the dawn of computers and the Information Age. But part of me also longs for less – less details, less complexity, less fear. Simpler times where I can deal with what I want to, or am able to, and then let the rest go where it will. But -at least so far- I haven’t been offered that choice. So I continue with a job I dislike more each day, and at the end of the day I head home to watch the slow-motion train wreck that my nation and my world have become. And I will try and maintain my faith in God, that He is in control, that He has a plan for me, that He loves me and will not forsake me. May His Will be done.