Saturday, April 11, 2020

A "COVID-19" Easter Saturday


We live in unprecedented times.  Our schools, jobs, and churches are all physically closed.  Our family members are sick and might even be dying, with no help on the immediate horizon for a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus.  Many of us have lost jobs or, if we have not lost our job, have taken pay cuts and are forced to work from home.  There, we try to keep our careers afloat while also trying to manage the education of our children under less than ideal learning environments.

We are experiencing, to a lesser extent, what the disciples felt on that “Easter Saturday.”  Six days prior, their long-awaited savior had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the accolades of the Jewish onlookers, those who hoped in Jesus as their long-awaited political savior.  In the span of a few short days, all of the hopes of those closest to Jesus were dashed.   We might try to imagine just how devastated those disciples felt that Saturday.  They put all their “eggs in one basket” and, when their Savior breathed his last breath on that dark Friday afternoon, they felt like they lost everything.  With the benefit of scripture and history, we can see how much the disciples “missed” when it came to the prophecies of Jesus’s resurrection, both from the Old Testament prophets as well as Jesus himself.  Yet we are similarly caught in the historical moment, grieving the loss of what we had assumed to be ours; certain, or at least predictable, outcomes for our family, our careers, and our finances. 

In these most difficult of times, God calls us to trust him for the health of our family, for our career and finances and even the educational outcomes of our kids.  We must trust him for the fact the He will provide, even though we can’t presently see how He will provide.  The Bible says that God’s riches and wisdom are so deep, that his judgements are “unsearchable” and that his ways are beyond “tracing out.”  Romans 11:33.  While we won’t understand all of God’s ways, that does not mean that there are not good and noble purposes being achieved through our present circumstances. 
In the book of Job, we see a righteous man lose it all--his family, his fortune, and even his health.   Job expresses his grievances against God for God’s plan, a plan that while we can see through the Biblical narrative, Job was never granted access to.  As God came to Job in the whirlwind, God reminded Job to whom it was, precisely, that Job was airing his grievances.  None of us built the universe, including its gravitational forces, all living beings therein, and even the corona virus itself.  We cannot see how time and space interact; we cannot see the end from the beginning.  (Job 38-41).  While God ultimately provided Job another family, his fortune and his health, he was never given access to God’s plan for his life.

Since we are within time and space, we can not be so presumptuous as to believe that we know the outcome of our present difficulties. Should not the COVID-19 crises alert us to the very dependency on God that our life circumstanced had heretofore masked?  Is it possible that God wants to do something through our professional and family life to achieve an outcome more eternally significant than the outcome we planned for ourselves and our family?

Earlier today, we made our annual “easter weekend” visit to Micah’s cemetery.  There, we talked to our living kids about death, grief, and what it might mean to be resurrected when Christ comes again.  Certainly, these precious  gospel opportunities might have been created through other means had Micah not died.  But if any one of our living child’s faith journey, or anyone else’s faith journey, has been positively impacted by the story of our deceased Micah,  it will redound to God’s glory in orchestrating such an outcome through Micah’s death.  We live in the hope that a thousand, or perhaps even a hundred thousand, such gospel opportunities will, in the end, demonstrate the goodness of God in orchestrating a life and death that is otherwise difficult to accept. 

But regardless of whether we find any circumstantial blessings to our present sufferings, we must immerse ourselves in the promises of scripture so that we can live in the joy of our eternal significance.  After all, COVID-19 has taken nothing from us that is of eternal significance.  If we focus exclusively on the loss of our income, relationships and physical opportunities, we will miss these opportunities to focus on our eternal blessings that cannot be lost.  1 Peter 1: 3-6 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”

On Easter Saturday, the disciples needed to wait upon the Lord only for a few short hours before their hopes and dreams were realized with the empty tomb, with Jesus Christ resurrected.  In our case, how long will we need to wait?  Whether for a few hours or a lifetime, let us pray and wait in hope, knowing that, as has often been said, “It is Friday, but Sunday is coming!”  Happy Easter to you and your family from the Wessman household.


No comments:

Post a Comment