Back to "Normal"

     So I have been thinking back to my college days a lot recently. No, nothing about the current global pandemic even remotely reminds of my college experience. It does call to mind something I learned though. Some back story. I graduated from a small Methodist college with a degree in math. Being a church sponsored school, every student was required to take one religion class before graduating. Most students were not very excited about this. To make matters worse, there were 2 religion professors, the "easy" one and the other one. Well, try as I might, I ended up with... the other one. Well, to make a long story a little less long, I ended up really enjoying the class and the professor. Yes, he was demanding, and yes he directly challenged these know-it-all 20 somethings to defend their faith, but he also forced us to figure out why we believed what we did. I did well enough in the class that the professor tried to persuade me to change my major to religion.

     Now, I say all that to get to this point. The class was Judeo-Christian Heritage and was an overview of Christianity from Genesis to modern day. One of the things that stuck out to me, and the thing that has me thinking back to those days, is the first century Christian church. It went from a literal handful of adherents to a religion that spanned the better part of 3 continents in a very short period of time. The thing that played a major part in its growth? The obstacles it faced. Despite nearly everything in society working to quell its spread, the gospel spread like wildfire. The early church had to be inventive in how it spread its message to avoid the dangers of being caught. It forced the church to become mobile and it didn't allow its members to get comfortable. The urgency and the cost of believing, instead of being a hindrance actually proved to be fertilizer for the young church.

     Today we are faced with a new set of challenges. No, it isn't particularly dangerous to be a Christian, at least in this country. It is challenging in an all new way. Churches are having to figure out how to assemble when you can't assemble. How do you spread a message when you can't meet? What do you do when, "We've always done it that way." isn't even an option any more? The church is having to flex creative muscles it hasn't had to use in decades, maybe centuries, and it is going to be the better for it. Churches have greatly increased their reach by going to cyberspace. Faith has become more than a luxury to be taken out and put on every Sunday, only to hang it up again until the next week. This crisis will pass in due time and life will go back to "normal", I pray that the church doesn't. I pray that the church is forever changed by this and it sees growth like that first century church.

Faith in a Time of Fear

     Social distancing, what a strange new phrase we have learned. The realities of our world have forced us to at least partially shut ourselves out from the rest of the world. Things are different and not just a little bit frightening. As a Christian, how are we to respond? We know God has not given us a spirit of fear, so should we just go on with our lives as normal? I had been toying with what kind of response I should have to the new normal we are experiencing when I heard the best advice I have yet to hear on the radio. Well, actually they were quoting someone else, someone somewhat unexpected. That person was Martin Luther. Yes, 500 years ago, Martin Luther penned the perfect response to the coronavirus in a letter to a fellow preacher.

     We tend to forget that Luther lived during the Black Plague. We learn about Luther and we learn about the plague, we rarely pay attention to the fact that they overlap. Luther was asked if he and his family, including his pregnant wife, would flee the city for the "safety" of the countryside. Here is his response.

“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash no foolhardy and does not tempt God."

As a Christian, you won't find better advice. Pray for protection, take actions to protect yourself, take care not to potentially infect others, and continue to serve God where He has called you to serve. In a nutshell, don't live in fear but be practical. Yes, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but he has given us sense. We need not live in fear, but we also need not be reckless. We also don't get a pass from doing what God has called us to do, in fact, it is more important than ever that we continue to serve God in whatever capacity He has called us.

Tents or Houses

     Moses had just returned with the 10 Commandments and it was time to worship. There was only one problem, there wasn't anywhere to do it. That is when God gave very detailed plans for what would become the tabernacle. Now if you want to see (technically read) the plans, you can find them in Exodus 25 and 26. If you do go and read that, you will find that everything is designed to be portable. All of the furnishings were designed to be easily carried and the tabernacle itself was really just a big tent. Why portable? They were never meant to be there very long. This was just a time of preparing them for what was to come; for a time when they could build a permanent structure to worship in.

     I think today we have a bad habit of building houses where God wants us to put up a tent. We linger too long in places where we should only be passing through; in places where we have things to learn to prepare us for what is to come. If you find yourself in a period of preparation, don't build a house there. Put up your tent, stay until it is time to move on to where you are meant to go and then move on. Don't spend your life somewhere you weren't meant to stay simply because you built a house instead of putting up a tent. Had Moses built a temple where they were they would never had moved on to the Promised Land. That time in the wilderness taught many important lessons in how to be a people, a people called by God, but it wasn't where they were destined to stay. You may be "in the wilderness" right now, but you aren't destined to stay there. Don't build a house and live there, put up a tent.