“What are you giving up for Lent?” However you or I answered that question weeks ago, things are different now. We’re all, believers in Jesus and non-believers alike, giving up a lot. No other way out. One question to ask, and there are innumerable questions on our minds, is this: Are you and I who know Jesus experiencing the sacrifices and calming our fears with confidence in the goodness of God?
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday” (Psalm 91:1-6).
How’s that? Won’t church people be infected and die like others? Look at church records of funerals during the Spanish flu a hundred years ago. This coronavirus may well strike you, me, or a loved one. How shall we understand Psalm 91 to be true?
Jesus knew this psalm, and I assume knew it from memory. In the wider view, contrasted to our living in our personal moment, this psalm is true of Jesus. Think of His visible ministry, all His time with the suffering and outcast, the unjust death He endured for you and me, but see the psalm as true because of His resurrection and exaltation to unending life. Access the promises of God through Jesus. He’s the Mediator between God and us, 1 Timothy 2:5. “When he calls to me I will answer; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation” (Psalm 91:15-16).
I am forever grateful to Rev. Arnold Kuntz for summing everything up so well. “Life narrows down, and crisis comes, and suddenly only one thing matters. And there in the narrow place, stands Jesus.” In this crisis we have a witness to one another and to the world. It’s a great time to be the Church!
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