Here We Stand
I look back on a hectic week and a half. Form last Thursday to Sunday I was in theologian’s paradise reminiscing with great thinkers about Scripture, culture and the way forward for the Church on Orca Island. Sunday, I headed back in weather that is way to cold for motorcycling. I had to pull over in Bellingham on the way back and as I did so I was convinced that both my hands will have to be amputated. It must have been quite a pathetic sight, me squatting next to shelves in Fred Myers shoving my hands into towels and begging God to make the blood flow into them. (Then asking Him to take my hands when the blood did start to flow and warm them us again. Never knew it was that sore!).
Anyway, with hand, body and foot warmers stuffed into every space available, overpriced Starbucks coffee and a tin of strawberries in my belly, I was on my way again. By this time COVID 19 panic was in full force and I was beginning the distance to the Canadian border as a race against time. If Americans were capable of electing Trump as their first citizen, what would stop them from eating a Canadian alive when they run out of supplies? Wasn’t going to take any chances. My body was half frozen anyway already!
I got home exhausted but grateful. And then the symptoms struck. Yes, some of the great thinkers weren’t great at being virus free and passed it onto me. It started with a light, different kind of headache, then a sore throat, more dry than sore and then body aches. Considering my ordeal back home, I initially shoved it off as fatigue, but they returned the next day and the next. I never had a fever but the way the symptoms intensified at certain times during the day for exactly three days, leaves me in no doubt that I caught it. So far it looks like I am one of the lucky ones whose body could put together a deadly immunity cocktail in which to drown the psychopathic pangolin virus. But my wife started now drying up an essential income stream.
On Sunday I started communicating to my leadership articulating the coming reality. We took two days to decide on cancelling our services, setting up an online plan and getting our communication to congregants on track. They were great! I never felt as inspired to prepare a carefully crafted sermon as I did this week. It’s done now and it comes from the Bible and my heart. I hope it enters others.
I feel deeply satisfied by how we were lead and responded in love and with grace to this pandemic. Next week will be a very different ball game. New issues will arrive as we gradually move into the new normal. I think were the focus this week has been on opening up channels of communication and contact, the focus will now shift to addressing problems arising in people’s hearts and minds, pastorally. I think we do not fathom the coming needs and pain that is yet to come from all this. But this I know. We were born and called in a time like this for a reason and God will either show us the way or make a way to honor Him through all this.
I wish you all a great weekend and I am eager to “meet” with you on Sunday. We now live in a world that is both utopian and apocalyptic simultaneously. What does that mean? In a utopian world view it is emphasized that it is within the ability of humankind to solve all problems and bring about salvation. In an apocalyptic worldview it is stressed that it is too late, and we are all doomed. Do yourself a favour and study headlines. You will see both worldviews being represented. It is harmful to be soaked into just one of these. To be inundated with both all at once is confusing and draining. And that is exactly what is happening right now.
The gospel of Jesus Christ offers a corrective on both notions. It tells us that all is not up to us. Though we can participate and partake in the God’s renewal of all creation in wonderful ways, Jesus is still the one that will ultimately make all things new. We will never have all the answers. This knowledge, funny enough, doesn’t lead to passivity but to hopeful engagement. Science is after all “thinking God’s thoughts after Him”.
Though things look bad, the gospel says nothing is fatal. Death itself has been defeated. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can thwart His good purposes for creation ultimately. The Corona virus might turn out to be the debt of our unthoughtful consumption, individualism and parasitic engagement with nature and society, but its is not something that announces the end of God’s grace full engagement with us. The end is indeed nigh, but a new and better day and new beginning is dawning with it.
We might be shaken but we are also stirred. And that is a good thing.
Hold on to this all with all your heart.
Gabriel J Snyman signing off for the weekend in the secure knowledge that Jesus never sleeps and holds us and the fate of all creation in His hands.
March 20th 2020