Homefront #5: Things we definitely know are true.

Praying worldwide prayers…

I don’t know that I have ever prayed for the whole world before.  We read that God so loved the world and we know He did, but to pray for the whole world previously would have felt so general as to be worthless.  Until now.

We know that we are of God and the whole world lies in under the sway of the wicked one (I John 5:19).

In praying for the entire world–as the Coronavirus works its way into every land, every community–let us pray…

—for those in the scientific and medical community working day and night to find a vaccine and a cure for COVID-19.

–for the health-care givers who subject themselves to the disease in order to minister to those stricken.

–for political and government leaders making decisions to protect their people and minister to the most vulnerable.

–for pastors and church leaders everywhere as they seek ways to minister to their people without endangering one another.

“Lead us, Father.  We have been handed lesson after lesson in these days: our interconnectedness, our dependency, our vulnerability, and our complete need of Thy watchcare and protection.  Please bless.”

Things we know and are assured of as the Coronavirus crisis continues across the world…

  1. It’s bad.
  2. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
  3. This too shall pass.  It will not last forever.
  4. It’ll happen again in the future sometime.  Pandemics, we are told, will come again, but different each time.
  5. This period, this pandemic, this worldwide crisis, will be studied and analyzed and written about as long as the Earth shall stand.
  6. We are learning lessons and making mistakes that will help us in the future.
  7. Many things will never return to their previous state. Businesses will learn new models, churches will find innovative ways to do ministry, educational institutions will change.  Our culture was in the process of changing, as it has forever been doing, but the pandemic accelerated the change to warp speed.
  8.  No one knows what life will look like when this is over and life returns to normal.
  9. Life on Earth will never be what it was before.  That may be good or bad.  No individual and no nation having been through this will return to the former position.  We are forever different.
  10. Churches, businesses, and schools that do not learn from this, that insist on returning to the pre-Viral state, will not survive for long.
  11. Some of us–I turn 80 in two days–will not be around to watch the long-range adaptations of society and governments to the Pandemic of 2020.  In some respects, I fear for my grandchildren.  They range in ages from 17 to 30, and presumably will have another six or seven decades of life before them.  I think of my prayers as time-release capsules, as I pray for them in advance, that the Lord will be there at every stage along the way to guide them, bless them, help them, keep them from evil, and use them for His glory.

Father in Heaven, mankind has tried to live in unbelief, ignorance, and atheism.  Mankind has tried to take the best and most comfortable from the Christian faith and ignore all the hard parts.  And now we see how foolish we were and how weak and dependent we are.

Help us, Father.  Your Word says “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.”  And that’s us. We have been laboring in vain, trying to build this earthly house without Thee. Forgive us.  Grant that we shall never return to the unbelief and ungodliness as before, but may live our days in a humble recognition that “we are not adequate in ourselves, but our adequacy is of God.”  (Psalm 127:1 and 2 Corinthians 3:5)

 

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