The Coronavirus Has A Hidden Invitation
By Rachael Gieger
Oh yes. I am that brave and/or foolish soul that decided to go ahead and take on the topic that’s troubling us all right now. This global pandemic has us shaken up -and rightly so. Masses are being cancelled, at-risk groups of people are in danger of death, the economy is taking a beating. But this also has me thinking: God is clearly doing something. He always is. But what?
Perhaps the lesson we all need to be taking as faithful people, as His Body, is that our relationship to suffering has to change. I overheard another student say on the phone yesterday, “It’s the end of the world. It has to be.” But does it have to be? Or is this just a very stark reminder of what the state of our world actually is, and has always been?
My dear sisters, our condition has never been stable. This earth was never meant to be our home -natural disasters, government shutdowns, and yes, global pandemics -are only a reminder of that. Is this the end of the world? Perhaps, no one knows. Probably not. But is it for certain the end of us believing the lie that we are invincible? Golly, I hope so. Since the Fall, we have never lived in a suffering-free world. There has always been disaster, illness, hatred, war, and tragedy. Our goal has never been to free ourselves of suffering, our God literally became man so He could take it on. Modern society has us thinking, even those of us who are faithful, that suffering means the end. It means it’s time to panic, because our high-tech solutions are no longer working.
We’re facing off with a new illness that proves us wrong, that shows us we don’t have it all squared away. This can either send us flying into a global panic that humanity is (shocker) still not immortal, or it can remind us to change our relationship to suffering. It can remind us to embrace it, ride it out, help each other -and pray. Pray for health and safety, yes, but pray also for the eyes to see grace amidst the chaos, for the wherewithal to be the voice of peace when the world is in uproar.
Suffering, for the Christian, has never meant the end. It has always been capable of serving as a reminder that because of a God Who loved us enough to embrace suffering, it’s the opposite of the end. It’s the beginning of something new that couldn’t have come about without the suffering in the first place. So it has always been with every disaster, every war, every pandemic-and so it will be till the end. God isn’t outdone -He’ll do something new with this suffering, our faith guarantees it. We can either join the world’s panic, or remember Who our God is. The choice is ours...what will it be?
