Psalm 23 (New Living Translation)

The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.

You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.

Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.

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Who could have thought, when we brought in the last of the garden vegetables in October and started cozying ourselves inside for the winter, that the whole world would still be locked indoors come spring?  When I listen to the neighborhood, silent of human activity, and when I drive on almost-empty streets, and when I keep my distance during senior hours at Walmart where an associate keeps guard over a bin of small bottles of hand sanitizer and the toilet paper is rationed, I have the same sense of surrealism that I had when the towers in New York fell.  Is this really happening?  How could this be?  Has the world gone crazy?  I’m not in the medical field—what can I do?

I’ve been reading about early Christians who cared for the sick and dying even during pandemics when government officials and the wealthy had left the cities.  In the Antonine plague (165 AD) five million people died; the plague of Cyprian in 251 had a 50% death rate.  The Christians who helped their neighbors at great risk to themselves truly believed, they knew, that their real home was in a better place; dying was not the worst thing that could happen.  What should I be doing today to love my virus-stricken neighbor?  What the Christians did during the Roman plagues filled a need that no one else filled.  Today we have government edicts and skilled medical personnel orchestrating care.  There doesn’t seem to be any point in disobeying willy-nilly and carrying victims into our homes for care.  But there is also the fear-stricken neighbor, and the lonely and the elderly and so on.  Maybe we have to step up our care for them.

A friend sent me an article by the theologian R. R. Reno (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/03/say-no-to-deaths-dominion).  I’m not sure he’s got it right about people carrying on with life as usual during the 1918 pandemic.  A writer in our local paper did a little research on that Spanish flu.  The reason people may have, as R. R. Reno says,  “continued to worship, go to musical performances, clash on football fields,” etc., could be that they did not know how bad the situation was, since “the government essentially banned leaders and the press from reporting upon the flu epidemic.”  Nothing negative could be published that might affect the war effort.  The pandemic was called the Spanish flu “because Spain, which was not at war, allowed the press to report on it openly” (quotes in article from John Barry of Tulane University).  Warnings from the US medical community were not passed along to the citizens.  (https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/carroll/lifestyles/cc-lt-dayhoff-032220-20200320-wmahqlv3drbghpv2hziglq4jny-story.html)

But R. R. Reno makes some interesting points:  “Fear of death and causing death is pervasive,” but “man was made for life, not death….  The mass shutdown of society…creates a perverse, even demonic, atmosphere.  Governor Cuomo and other officials insist that death’s power must rule our actions.”  Children cannot play on playgrounds, we cannot touch our grieving friend, we cannot share Christ’s body and blood around the altar.  Basketball hoops are being removed and skateboard ramps covered with dirt (https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/basketball-rims-removed-skate-parks-shut-down-and-more-ways-cities-are-trying-to-enforce-social-distancing/).   We have ignored the truths of living and eternity and made physical survival a god.  “Alexander Solzhenitsyn resolutely rejcted the materialist principle of ‘survival at any price.’  It strips us of our humanity.”

So what do we do?  Stay or flee, cower or reach out?  Be sensible, but live.  I do think that, if we can do it, flattening the curve is a good idea so we don’t run out of ventilators.  If we have a spike in covid-19 illness that requires hospitalization and not enough ventilators, that’s not a potential fear that “somebody” might get sick but a real fact that a real person is likely to die.  

A certain relative is genuinely concerned for us.  We feel blessed by God to help him in various ways.  We feel responsible to try to stay healthy to be there for him, and for all our family.

My mother lives with my sister in Baltimore now, and we try to visit once a week and take lunch to the family.  Should we stop doing that?  Where has my nephew been?  Who’s been at my sister’s grocery store?  Could we infect my mother?  And Maurice—he’s over 70, and our son gives us worrying statistics on the danger we’re in.  I don’t want us all to die—and we Christians are called to defend life.  (Plus I personally have too much clutter in my house at this point to want to die now and leave it behind for someone else to clean up).  But my thinking hadn’t gotten to the theologian’s point:  “There are many things more precious than [physical] life.”  Of course.  And I know that.  But I hadn’t thought of that yet.  A woman from church was visiting her mother who has Alzheimer’s at the facility where she lives.  Of course visitors are no longer allowed, so my friend and some family members stood outside and talked to their mother through a window.  Not surprisingly, the mother kept forgetting why they weren’t inside and why no one could visit her.  And what about all the residents who don’t have first floor windows?

And then there is a bigger issue altogether:  What is the Lord God Almighty doing through all this?  Jody Wood, director of New York City Intercessors/UN Global Prayer, suggests, based on Hebrews 12:25-29, that God is shaking the earth and its systems to destroy the false foundations upon which people have built their lives (https://youtu.be/GWYn5r60dhk).  Will we listen to God and hold to his unshakable truth, or, having made up our own rules for living, will we find we have built on sinking sand (Matthew 7:24-27)?  Oh, that many would run even now to the cross of Jesus, the immovable Rock of our eternal salvation and the only hope for lasting peace!—while there is yet time.

It’s a lot to balance—questions of life and death, principles of truth and goodness and beauty.  Indeed, is beauty anywhere at all in this mess?  But it is.  I saw it.  Driving home from church last Sunday, where six of us provided a streamed worship service on Facebook live, I was practically slapped in the face by the earth in sudden and full spring bloom—pink and white trees, with yellow forsythia and daffodils below, shining under under a sapphire sky that for days had been gray.  Were there always so many trees on this road?  Do they always bloom at once?  Even in troubling times, if God’s people don’t praise him, the very rocks will cry out! (Luke 19:37-40)—and the trees and the flowers and all creation.  God holds us in the palm of his hand (Psalm 95:4-7).  He is working out his perfect Kingdom purposes in us through Jesus (2Timothy 1:8-10).  He sees the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).  One day the fallen kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever (Revelation 11:15).  Lord, may we look forward to that day with faith and patience.  On the hard journey that is life (John 16:33), give us the courage to love one another deeply (1Peter 4:8).  Help us not to look at the turbulence around us but to cling to your steady hand (Matthew 14:22-32).  Guide us along right paths so that we bring honor to your name (Psalm 23:3).

So I pray and think and hope I don’t take too long to act.  How can I be a witness to the truth and power of the gospel in this time?  How can I honor the Lord?  We have decided to still visit my mother.  I—we all—can love the ones in our household, write notes, make phone calls, work from home, support local businesses as much as possible, deliver groceries, find a way to connect with neighbors, support our churches, donate what is needed locally and farther afield, pray for one another by name.

Let me know if you would like Maurice and me to put your name on our prayer list.

Lord, we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you (2Chronicles 20:12).  Guide us along right paths so we bring honor to your name (Psalm 23:3).