I was thinking this morning about what God was doing with the pandemic and people's "pandemia". I have heard it said that the more things change the more people stay the same. I wonder in what way this is true?
I thought about cultural shifts even in my lifetime. Matters like attitudes toward women at work after WWII, the hippie movement, love and Woodstock, Viet Nam war protests and the response to returning vets as opposed to today. I thought about the historical shift under Constantine with Christianity being the scapegoat of governments and kingdoms to becoming the favored child. How the context of morality has shifted from that day till this. I thought about how the development of "pandemia" and its fear can add to the impact of world wars, world pollution, world disease, could add to the idea of need for a one world government.
And I thought to myself people are indeed still the same. Being lost is not just a religious idea. It is a moral truth. We seek answers from government, leaders and others and they are never enough.
What is God up to in a pandemic? In answer to that thought, I found some things that made sense. There is an abundance of scripture that indicates it was the work of God to provide the fundamental structure of our existence. You know, the inanimate stuff of physics, quantum physics, math, science and such. Next it was the work of God to bring life to interact with those building blocks. Now comes the very interesting development: moral structure to deal with the freedom we have to play with God's building blocks.I bet your mom told you very early on not to throw the blocks. Right?
The first two steps are PROVISION and the third step is OPERATION. In operation God has shifted gears. The question, what is God doing, has to do with purpose and that may or may not interfere with my purpose. After all it is my life isn't it? Now we're getting to the meaning of the phrase the more things change the more they stay the same. When it comes to purpose we are pretty focused on what's in it for me. But out lives are a part of things much larger than ourselves. We live in the context of the movement of men and nations, of pandemic disease (Covid-19 is not the first nor the last), moral shifts, cultural shifts, immigrant and emigrant shifts, World Wars and we want to know: What is going on?
Let's shift gears for a bit. Her name was Grace Griffin. She was my great Aunt on my mother's side. Late in life she came to live with my folks but before that she was a lifelong resident of Maine and lived with my grandmother in So. Portland. When we went to visit grandmother, we visited grandma and Aunt Grace. I remember her reading her bible or commentary and marking them with a red pencil she kept handy. It had no eraser just a gold cap and it said Harris Oil Company on it. She might look up and share with delight some insight or truth she had just found as naturally as we might talk about some movie or TV show we saw when we were at school in homeroom. After her death I inherited her G. Campbell Morgan commentaries on the Gospels. I still love to see what she had marked and wonder about her conversations with the Lord concerning those thoughts.
His name was Collins Cramer (Rev). He was my grandfather on my dad's side. It was my privilege to live with him and grandmother on the farm for one summer. He farmed for Old Home Manor in PA and pastored a country church. Like my Aunt Grace he delighted in the scripture. On occasion as I passed by his study he would emerge to share his insight and excitement about a passage of scripture and what it said to him. In the morning when I rose I would hear him at prayer, prayer for people, his world and his grandson. After a bit he would call me to breakfast and we would go out to work in the fields with other men and equipment.
My parents and many others of the family on both sides shared these common traits of naturally delighting in concepts they found in the bible and sharing insights as to how they would work in life. Life was very much about what God was doing. They too wanted to know what God was doing, but their perspective on that was very different. Faith did not mean pie in the sky. The Christian life meant going to God. And in the going to God they traveled the same ground as everyone else, they breathed the same air, drank the same water, shopped in stores, read newspapers, were citizens under government, paid for groceries and gas, feared the same dangers, had the same pressures and got buried in the same ground.
So what is the difference? They knew each step, each breath, each success, each tragedy, in all of life, they were preserved by God, accompanied by God, ruled by God and in it all they would be guarded from every evil by the One who guards our very life.
Eternal life given to them by repentance and faith is a quality of life that never perishes nor fails. It keeps us untarnished in the midst of life regardless of its trouble. And when life comes to its end in an expected manner or unexpectedly, it never wins for those marked by eternal life. The quality of life goes on in greater power and depth after death, for it is the quality of life needed to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote: "But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however slight that deviation might be. It is not our judgement of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God's faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide soley by the Word of God in all simplicity."
It occurs to me while under stay at home orders, that we would do well to not only be concerned about online teaching but about the offline teaching we have modeled and shared concerning what God is doing.
It was from the lives of other Christians I came to lay the foundation of knowing God provides that which I need to even exist. I came to see the activity of God in the lives of those who knew him well. I came to hunger for and find the same indwelling God they had found. If flows down to me and out through me to my kids, my grandkids and others around me. Indoctrination? Hardly. It's just water that spills over from the well springs of everyday life in Christ.
What falls from your bucket?
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