Quarantined In Christ
Note: I recently submitted this letter to the Press Democrat, our local newspaper. Please join me in praying that they will publish it. Also, please feel free to send it to your own local newspaper in any form you are comfortable with. Let us together redeem the time, for the days are evil, but full of opportunity.
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Editor,
I would like to offer a Christian perspective on the coronavirus pandemic.
Some 3500 years ago God spoke through Moses to a despotic Pharaoh in Egypt, telling him, “Let my people go.” Nine times Pharaoh refused, until at last God sent a final plague by which all the first-born sons of Egypt died. God’s people, however, were safely quarantined at home. When the angel of death saw the blood of a lamb on the doorposts and lintels of their houses, he passed them by.
This story speaks comfort to us today. Ever since Adam’s rebellion in Eden, all are infected with the virus of sin. Most freely do we display its ugly symptoms, and spread the disease wherever we go. But in love and mercy, the holy God withholds his final judgment. Instead, with one hand he sends lesser plague after lesser plague, warning of the greater one to come. With the other, he sends the Lamb of God, whose righteous life and atoning death provide the one house into which we may safely flee. If we are quarantined there, the final plague will pass us by.
The coronavirus is but a prod to enter the house. The risen Jesus Christ is the house. In love, he bids us all, “Come home.” And most truly, his home is a glorious place to live!
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Such a plague has gone out into the whole world unlike anything we have experienced during our lifetime. May it jar many to pass under the lintel marked with his blood with such a sincerity that they will stay put and not harden their hearts going back outside into the world when they see the plague has relented. May true conversion result towards the fullness of his house.
Amen, Don, Amen!
Indeed, a Christian perspective on the Covid-19 is truly needed at this time.
While we take our hats of to the thousands of doctors, nurses, medical practitioners, soldiers, law enforcers and many other frontliners who put their lives at risk just for others to have a fighting chance against this pandemic, we are at the same time appalled at how humanity fears a virus that causes physical death yet continuous to be oblivious to the more important spiritual death that has been caused by the virus of sin. Even as we pray for some vaccine that will cure mankind of this pandemic, we must continue to pray for that most important medicine of all, grace of God in Jesus alone. May this pandemic drive man to his knees and beg that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cover them from the condemnation that is in sin.
Yet in all this, the Christian must patiently wait for the purpose of God why in sovereignty He allowed this virus to plague mankind.
Thanks, Rafael, for your thoughtful comment. I join with you in praying that we will have opportunities to share the good news of the eternal safety that is found in Christ, and how all these “birth pains” of a World to Come are meant to guide us to Him.