Editor’s Note: We’ve been quarantined, locked down, and obliged to forego in-person worship. And like never before, we’ve come to see the hope of our faith in unexpected places. In a special section of our Summer issue, 10 of our brothers and sisters reflect on the thoughts that have come to their minds.
In the midst of the coronavirus, as we watch death tolls mount, businesses close, the stock market fluctuate, and families mourn, it makes sense that we would wonder what God is doing. We know He has promised to cause all things to work together for the good for those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28), that He will use even the worst things in our lives to conform us to the image of His Son. But does that include something as hideous as coronavirus? I think it does. God is at work in His world, and among His people. Here are just a few ways I see that God is using the evil of the coronavirus in our lives to conform us to the holiness and beauty of Christ:
God is exposing our idols
Perhaps one of the gifts wrapped in the unwanted package labeled coronavirus is that it is exposing the things we may have allowed to compete with Christ as the true source of happiness, security, and meaning in our lives. Idols are not necessarily bad things. They are usually good things that have become ultimate things. An idol is anything apart from Christ about which we would say, “I must have this to be happy.”
But here’s the thing: As long as we have these things, we find it hard to even see them as idols. They just seem like good things we enjoy. Productivity, financial security, health, control, sports — these are all good things that so easily become ultimate things. As the coronavirus threatens so many good things we enjoy — things such as the savings we sacrificed for, important events we wanted to celebrate, face-to-face enjoyment of people we care about, jobs we enjoy, plans we’ve made — some of these things are being exposed as idols.
The world is watching. They want to see if Jesus really makes a difference in how a person suffers what is unbearable and loses what is valuable.
Having our idols exposed is never comfortable or convenient. None of us relishes naming and forsaking things we love. We can’t imagine life without them. But if we truly desire to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might, we’ve got to destroy the idols that are keeping us from it.
I suppose the question for some of us is: As God has used the impact of the coronavirus to expose idols in my life, am I interested and willing to forsake them, destroy them? Or am I really just waiting until I can prop them back up, put them back into the place they were before, so life can get back to “normal”?
Perhaps “getting back to normal” is not at all what God has in mind for us. Perhaps God has in mind a new normal, a new day-by-day way of walking through this life in which He has no rival for our affections, our devotion, and our joy.
God is calling us to prayer
We believe prayer matters not only to God, but also to us. We believe we ought to pray and need to pray. But oftentimes we do not live day by day as if prayer is all that important, evidenced by the reality that we do not pray as we ought. Perhaps that is because we are blissfully blind to our true neediness, dull to our utter dependence upon God to act, to intervene, and to supply.
It’s not until there is something we need, something the world needs, that is beyond our ability, to either bring about or prevent, that we become desperate enough to actually pray — regularly, urgently, broadly, brokenheartedly.
As modern-day Americans we are used to so many things being within our power, within our grasp. But this virus with all of its implications is beyond us. We are at the mercy of a powerful, purposeful God, and so we cry out for His mercy!
It may seem that we are helpless in defeating the spread of this virus and hopeless as losses pile up. But we not helpless or hopeless. We are not without a Father, not without an Advocate, not without a Comforter, not without a Source. So we pray.
God is slowing us down to show us what is important
God has opened up our schedules and slowed down our pace and made the needs of the world around us, our neighborhood around us, unavoidable and urgent. He’s giving us the opportunity to lean into that need and away from our own comfort, perhaps even our own safety. He’s giving us the opportunity to rethink our habits, our commitments, and what, until now, we’ve considered “essential.” He’s inviting us away from radical individualism, an obsession with being entertained, and an expectation of impenetrable good health into loving our neighbors as ourselves, meditating on the law day and night, and aiming that Christ would be honored in our bodies, whether by life or by death.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their blindness to what really matters to God. They were tithing mint, dill, and cumin while neglecting the weightier matters of the law, which Jesus identified as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Tithing their spices while they were also taking advantage of the weak, withholding mercy from the desperate, and honoring God with their lips while their hearts were far from Him were exercises in missing the point. They had completely lost their sense of proportion in terms of what matters to God.
Perhaps we, too, have lost our sense of proportion. Maybe we’ve been just too busy, too distracted to see it, to be willing to change course. God has put our busy lives on pause and is giving us the opportunity to reconsider our priorities and passions. Let’s not miss what He wants to show us.
God is planting us among our neighbors
In the book of Acts we see that the persecution Christians experienced, though it could not have seemed like a kindness of God at the time, was really a strategy of God to spread the Gospel. We read again and again in Acts that the word was spreading (Acts 6:7, 8:4, 12:24, 13:49, 19:20). I wonder if God might be working in an inverse way through this virus. We’re not being dispersed during this crisis; we’re sheltering in place. We’re staying at home. Yet we have so many ways, many new ways even, to spread the word from our homes or from the end of our driveways, or across the hall in our apartment buildings.
As my husband and I have begun to walk every evening in our neighborhood, I find myself thinking about the people who live inside the homes we pass. I find myself wondering in a way I didn’t before, If someone who lives in that house gets sick and heads to the hospital, are they confident that they will see their loved one again in this life or the next? I’m asking myself, Do I really care that people right around me are lost without hope in Christ? Am I ashamed of the Gospel that is the power of Christ for salvation, or am I looking for opportunities to share it?
So many churches are rightly thinking about the changes that may be ahead in terms of staffing and programs as members lose their jobs and giving drops off. But what if an impact of this crisis is that our eyes are opened, perhaps for the first time, to the lost neighbors around us? What if the fear and urgency of the moment emboldens church members to talk to neighbors not only about the virus but also about their hope in Christ? Imagine what it would be like when we begin to meet again if we not only relish taking Communion together again, but also get to celebrate the baptisms of friends and neighbors who have come to Christ during this pandemic.
God is giving us the opportunity to live out genuine faith
The whole of the Christian life is centered on putting all of our hope, all of our confidence in Christ. It is centered on trusting a God we can’t see, who has a plan we can’t completely understand or articulate. It is putting all our confidence in what God has said and living as if it is the most reliable truth in the universe. Because it is.
But can we be honest and admit that in our affluence and independence, it is really very easy to give lip service to being people of faith while in reality depending on our bank accounts, our jobs, our health regimen, even our ability to bend the will of God through our prayers to provide financially comfortable, pain-free, disaster-free lives? In these days of uncertainty and loss, the genuineness of our faith is being put to the test. Our love for God and belief that He is good is being tested when someone we love dearly dies a lonely death. Our gladness in God is being tested as we are forced to adjust our lifestyles or perhaps even give up our homes, or are forced to reenter the workforce after retirement because of financial loss.
The genuineness of our faith is not only being put to the test; it’s being put on display. The world is watching. They want to see if Jesus really makes a difference in how a person suffers what is unbearable and loses what is valuable. They want to see if the faith we give lip service to is real and if it makes any difference at all as we face the losses of life, or if the only real difference between us and them is that we usually head out our driveways on Sunday mornings to go to church while they stay at home.
What a gift, to have the opportunity to live out genuine faith before a watching world. Now is the time to find out if we, along with Paul, have learned in whatever situation we are in, to be content (Philippians 4:11). Now is the time to find out if we, along with Paul, can “commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities … by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left … as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:4-10).
Nancy Guthrie, host of the “Help Me Teach the Bible” podcast at The Gospel Coalition, teaches the Bible through numerous Bible study books at her home church, Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as at conferences around the country and internationally. Her most recent book is “Saints & Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus.” Her next book, “God Does his Best Work with Empty,” will be released in September 2020.
Photography by Eric Brown