The Covid 19 pandemic heightens our awareness to several truths about life that we have not been paying attention to. Firstly, the virus draws our attention to the reality of how much we need one another, how infectious our thoughts and actions can be and how important it is to care for one another. Secondly, the virus forces us to face the reality of how fragile life and wealth can be. Thirdly, the virus exposes the spiritual condition of our hearts.
Angela Merkel has described the Covid 19 pandemic as the biggest challenge to Germany since World War II. It is indeed a crisis that may spell the end of the capitalistic economy. But it is also the greatest opportunity for all of us who believe that we are the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus to live out the truth that we are all one in Christ Jesus.
To do so, we need to put on Christ who is our robe of righteousness. But how are we to put on Christ in our daily lives? The apostle Paul uses the metaphor of putting on new clothes. So we first have to take off our old clothes of guilt and self righteousness. Many of us are living in the mental prisons of our past or we are living with nightmares of the future. The first step to putting on Christ is well described by Eugene Peterson in his interpretation of Romans 12:1-2:
"So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2 MSG
Like the prodigal son and the alcoholics in the Alcoholic Anonymous programme, we need to take the first steps of admitting our powerlessness in a future that is so unpredictable and uncertain as well as full of potential calamities such as economic collapse, viral pandemics, world wars and climate change. We need to believe in a God of love who holds the future in His hands and who can restore us to sanity and to turn our wills and our lives to Him.
Jesus came to set us free from the prisons of our past so that they can be our universities to help us live more fully in the present and to see God's dreams for our future. When we take the first step of turning back to God we will, like the prodigal son, find God waiting for us. Richard Rohr drew attention of the goal of true prayer - to give us access to God, to allow us to listen to God and to hear Him as well as to experience God's presence deep within our hearts.
Covid 19 is to open our eyes to the truths of the first two beatitudes which Eugene Peterson has translated as follows:
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you." Matthew 5:3-4 MSG
Eugene Peterson also gives us the following wise advice in Romans 12:3:
"I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him." Romans 12:3 MSG
Let us therefore give thanks that we can live by grace. As we wash our hands, use the sanitisers and wear masks during this Covid 19 pandemic, let us remember to put on Christ and seek the Holy Spirit to cleanse our hearts, rewire our thoughts and renew our minds.
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