What Do I Know?

Matthew 6:24-36

I’ve been struggling to write this article for you, because I’m not sure what to tell you. There is so much unknown right now. Did the virus come from a market or a lab? Do our bodies gain immunity if we have it or not? When will there be a vaccine? When will our lives get back to normal? Is there a “normal” any more?

So, I’m going to try to stick to what I do know. I know that we will not return to worship in person until our community has had two sustained weeks of significant decrease in reported new cases. State Epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell told me that. I know we must continue to be vigilant, wash our hands, maintain our social distance, don’t touch our faces. The Coronavirus Task Force told me that. I know that we must never weigh the lives of vulnerable people against economic prosperity. Jesus told me that.

“You cannot serve God and wealth. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about you body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Jesus does not mean that we should disregard the importance of our physical lives and what we need to survive; quite the opposite in fact. Life is more than food, more than wealth, more than the stock market, more than the standard of living in this country. In the Kingdom of God, life is the most precious thing, each human life. So precious that Jesus died for every human life. True living, serving God in his kingdom and living in his righteousness, lives as Jesus lived, putting the lives of the vulnerable first, showing sacrificial love to others, and not worrying about the cost. And when we live that way, we are prepared to receive the true provision of God, the bread of life that will sustain us no matter what..

I know that we all really miss getting to be together. You all have told me that. We all want to follow Jesus; we just don’t want it to be this hard. We must endure and place the needs of our community and the vulnerable among us above our own. For when we stand in grace, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”