May 3

Reunions are strange. The past memories do not jive with present physical reality. At best, a class reunion is a glimmer of what was. While memories fade (or get augmented) over time, the way we all look now is what gets notice.

God knows this about us, that we see the physical far easier than we see the immaterial, the moral, the spiritual. And if so, then the physical can point to the not physical.

The question of What is God doing in the coronavirus? is probably too multi-faceted to attempt in one sitting. But I'll venture at least this...

Like prophets of old, is God allowing the coronavirus (threatening our health and our economies) to show us the rages and wages of sin? Is it possible that a physical threat gets our attention in a way that a spiritual threat does not?

A book I'm reading right now phrases it this way: "Is physical evil a parable, a drama, a signpost pointing to the moral outrage of rebellion against God?"

Deep down, we know this to be true. If we evaluate our own prayer life, we admit that we pray in a much more desperate way for physical healing and protection that we do against our sin against God, right?

Christians and non-Christians alike can get coronavirus. Christians and non-Christians alike can experience the inconveniences, even the economic disaster that this virus has caused. The results of Genesis 3 affect all of us.

But the difference is this. Christians are no longer under the death sentence that sin demands. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 says, "For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ."

I am not destined to attend my class reunion that is now postponed anyway.

But I am destined to obtain that final physical salvation, when the renewed physical will align with the spiritual.

And if the coronavirus points us to see how sin has broken the world, how the world needs a Savior that social-distancing and face masks can never be, there's value in that, right?

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church | Juneau