Wednesday, January 12, 2022

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13, The Message Bible)

                Covid has hit close to home this past week. One of our children’s families have tested positive. No one is dangerously ill or in danger of hospitalization but it is still disturbing news.

                It is one thing to watch the news and hear the alarming statistics but so far that’s all the numbers were, mind-numbing statistics. I had no skin in the game. I have been well-secluded from the virus. I had hoped my family and relatives were safe, too. Up to now, that had been the case. At the very least, when I finally have had enough Covid news, I can turn the TV off. But now it’s personal; covid has a face and those faces are very familiar and much loved. They will get through it but it’s distressing just the same.

                We are not the only ones, of course, who are experiencing covid and for far too many, the consequences have been deadly. There seems no end to the nature of this pandemic and the effects it wreaks upon the world.

                So how do we endure and how do we thrive in these covid times?

                It may seem terribly naïve and simplistic to say that we should trust in God and carry on. After all, what can ever really separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31)

                During my personal life as well as my pastoral ministry, I have often turned to the above verse from 1 Corinthians. It is a comforting verse but also a challenging verse, especially the part that asserts that God will never let us be pushed past our limits.

                Most of us can tell personal stories about times in our lives when our limits were sorely stretched and strained, maybe even to a breaking point. We may even describe feeling a sense of divine abandonment when dealing with some crisis, some calamity, some overwhelming experience in which we were sure that we would break under the burden. Intellectually, we know that we need to have faith in such times, but emotionally and spiritually our limits are sorely tested.

                The Apostle Paul was no spiritual wet noodle when it came to facing his own tests. “I’ve worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death’s door time after time. I’ve been flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I’ve been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I’ve had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I’ve been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I’ve known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather.” (2 Corinthians 11: 23 – 27, New Living Translation) Once he despaired for his own life at a very low period.

                Despite experiencing what might break most us, he has the temerity, the boldness, the audacity to endure these things with the courage of faith, believing he was stronger and more blessed than if he had not experienced such things. “Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12: 9 -10, NLT)

                I don’t think Paul was just being a martyr or a masochist nor even a super-saint. He was sticking to his preaching and to his conviction that despite what the world threw at him, God was a more dynamic force to be reckoned with. God in Christ would help him get through anything, even death itself if it came to that.

                “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?... No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35, 37 -39, NLT)

                Take that, covid!!

 

Dale