March 12, 2020 – Click here to listen
President Trump ended travel from continental Europe last night for at least a month. China and other countries have already been banned. I have a friend that was hoping to leave for a two-week vacation to Europe beginning in Prague next week. He is singing the blues and said he would go to plan B, “whatever that was.” Last night I went to a group Bible study and the founding pastor said that they were having extreme problems getting our church members out of Israel (where they have been on a church-sponsored Holy Land trip.) This is because their flights have been cancelled. My wife and I were scheduled to leave for Israel toward the end of the month, but I guess we will go to plan B “whatever that is.”
The outbreak has ended one of the longest bull markets in history; colleges and universities are closing their campuses; the NBA has postponed their season; toilet paper is hard to find; music festivals and other large gatherings are being closed; why even Tom Hanks and his wife got the virus down in Australia. This in addition to locusts eating up Africa, fires devouring land in California, and Australia; earthquakes blasting out of the earth; and devastating tornados tearing through major cities.
Dang! – If frogs start hopping around, and rivers turn to blood as happened in Egypt preceding pharaoh letting the Jews return to their homeland where will we go? Will God provide manna and clean water for His people? What about that vacation to the keys I was planning? What about those campaigning for the election? How can I possibly close that big business deal? Who will buy my plantation?
This entire scenario reminds me of 9/11. One day we were living in what we call normalcy and suddenly everything changed. Everyone remembers where they were when 9/11 hit. At the time I was CEO of our software company and we had about 180 employees. I had just launched a total rewrite of our comprehensive software system which had 5 million lines of code. I was burning through 1 million dollars a month in payroll alone. When those planes hit the World Trade Center our business stopped. No one was buying anything, and the money quit coming in, but the bills needed to be paid. Our customers and everyone else in the country seemed glued to their TV sets trying to hear the next devastating turn of events; the last thing they wanted to do was buy software.
I called a meeting with all of the leadership of the company. We had a huge conference table and it was full plus chairs that were brought in. When I walked in to begin the meeting and looked around the room. It took one glance to determine that they were all literally terrified. Faces were white as sheets and eyes were so wide no one even had any wrinkles. What were we going to do?
I had to sit down because I was laughing so hard at their expressions. I of course had lived on the mean streets of New Orleans and elsewhere for many years and had seen the worst of the worst that life could render including seeing dead people lying in the streets. I had been to hell and back; penniless, homeless, addicted, a criminal, and was completely alone with no family to turn to and not one friend. I told our employees this was nothing in comparison! Yes, we would lay off some people, but it would be a good time to trim the non-producers and prune the deadwood off the rose bush. I told them I would lead the effort to start calling on customers and if the airports were shut down, we would drive to see them. I said that this will not last forever and that we weren’t going to allow a bunch of stinking terrorists to strike fear in our hearts. Their expressions changed immediately and in short order we were back to normal and in fact were experiencing a surge in business like we had not seen before.
My friends do not fear the unknown. God holds you in His beautiful hand and is with you right now. I don’t know why God would allow Satan to unleash this pandemic and other occurrences to ravage His world, but I do not have a single doubt, not one, that ultimately it will serve His purpose. 9/11 served as a wake-up call to America and partisan bickering stopped for a little while and churches experienced a huge surge in people attending. People were afraid just like now and they needed reassurance and hope. Churches were empty again after a few months and then it was back to business as usual.
Keep in mind that in the United States only 34 people have died from Coronavirus. Most who contract the disease survive just like they do with other forms of the flu. This virus will end and then most will return to their routines. I read that in the United States 2500 people die from something each day. Heart problems, cancer, car wrecks, old age, and so on. We need to ensure we are ready. Could God be telling us not to put so much of our time and effort into things. Could He be telling us that life is like a vapor, here for a moment and then gone and after that the judgment? The best things in life are not things. The love of Jesus is the best.
I have a close friend who is fighting for his very life as cancer has spread all over his body. There are many complications and it is a very serious situation. I asked you last week to please pray for Michael and now I ask you again. Please petition God to spare this wonderful man and allow him more time. He belongs to Jesus and I’m praying for a miraculous healing.
God does tell us about our suffering and hard times. We all face them at one point or another in life, and many of us may even find ourselves there right now.
You have heard it said: “This too shall pass.” Well that phrase is not in the Bible. The great news is this: God never leaves us to fend for ourselves in difficult times. He promises to be with us in all that we face, and His whole heart encompasses our pain, surrounds us in peace, and gives us incredible hope and grace to keep pressing through. What it does say is below.
2 Corinthians 4:16
“Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal,”