Devotional
Have you been watching the News recently? Not just in the context of the current pandemic, but before that. As the capabilities of information technology increased, from the written word to the telegraph, telephone to the Internet, the News has become a bigger facet of our everyday lives.
I don't mean the News that happens around us every day, in our immediate relationships: weather, sports, local government reporting, etc. A central facet of the News is that it happens far away; its shocking in some way, and it incites in us a feeling of obligation to do something about it, even though, because of the boundaries of space, time, and our own creatureliness, nothing can be done. The News is wars and rumors of wars, as Jesus once said. It calls our imaginations away from the present, away from the places where we CAN have an impact... or could have, if our imaginations, hearts, and muscles had been devoted to loving that place. Which is what makes it so shocking when the News changes your daily life. Is this why we are so resistant to taking action which might spare our neighbors and ourselves? Because we know (or at least we have been trained to believe) that the News is something that happens somewhere else. The coronavirus is as much an outbreak of the News as it is a virus.
COVID-19: and the News became flesh, and dwelt among us.
The Way of Jesus is not the way of the News. Though Jesus transcended all boundaries in his power, sitting enthroned in the heavens, he gave that selfsame power up. "And though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant." Let that sink in: to save the world, Jesus could have snapped his fingers; instead, he poured himself into a particular time, into a particular place, and loved with a life-giving, self-sacrificing love the people who were six inches in front of his face.
And the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us.
To be a Christian in the time of coronavirus is to follow the pattern of our savior: to voluntarily limit ourselves for the sake of others. As we have been saved, so now we save.
A quote:
“But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time...of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here...It is in the world, but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.” - Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
For discussion:
1. What are some steps you can take to limit yourself for the sake of the vulnerable among us?
2. Before this epidemic happened, how did your lack of limitation harm others? Can you think of ways in which pouring yourself into the particularities of the present actually served somebody?
3. Think of some ways to pray- not for the epidemic as a whole, but for your immediate neighbors and family in the midst of it.
A prayer for God's presence, from Psalm 144:
[1] Blessed be the LORD, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle;
[2] he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me.
[3] O LORD, what is man that you regard him,
or the son of man that you think of him?
[4] Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow.
[5] Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down!
Touch the mountains so that they smoke!
[6] Flash forth the lightning and scatter them;
send out your arrows and rout them!
[7] Stretch out your hand from on high;
rescue me and deliver me from the many waters.