A Time to Trust

It has been the year of 1000 days, and we are on day 2789.

I have spent the last ten weeks at home. Ten weeks. It feels like forever. It has been forever. Basically, the only place I've been for the last ten weeks is to the barn to take care of my horse. We've had groceries delivered. We've had pet food delivered. We've had plants delivered. I'm even getting a pair of new jeans delivered. And, you know, in a lot of ways, it's been ok. I've had loads to do. I had to finish up my courses at the college I teach at, and then I had to do work on a course toward my doctorate. I've been busy in the garden. Every day has been filled with purpose, and I'm grateful for that.

But in the last few weeks, especially as things have started to open back up again a little, I've discovered things about myself that I don't like. I was getting more and more afraid. I found myself looking at people with suspicion and fear. Getting gas felt like walking through a minefield. I was trying to walk through the world without touching anything or anyone. "Out there" felt dangerous. "At home" felt safe. The rigamarole of trying to remember to disinfect my hands, not touch my face, not touch germy surfaces, stay two metres away from everyone, remember not to touch my steering wheel until I'd disinfected my hands, and on and on and on in a desperate effort to not get sick is exhausting. It didn't feel worth it. Leaving the house didn't feel worth it. It was easier to just stay home and avoid everyone altogether. Plaguey bags of pestilence -- that's how I was looking at people. Every time I got back home, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I am naturally an introvert and a homebody, and I think I could quite easily become agoraphobic.

I am missing my loved ones, missing my friends and colleagues, missing my church, missing hugs, but I was becoming more afraid of the risks. I am afraid of the people I love most, and they are afraid of me. I am afraid of doing things I have always enjoyed doing. It strikes me as especially cruel that if my loved ones are suffering, I am to keep my distance. So my friends are crying and I stand at a distance and let them cry alone because I am too afraid that I might get sick if I break that precious two-metre rule. Oh, I am staying healthy, physically, but I'm not living. I'm being told I need to fear everyone and they need to fear me. But I miss them. And I'm pretty sure that if this is how I need to live for the next two years in order to avoid getting sick, until maybe a vaccine is available, or maybe a vaccine will never be available, then by the time a vaccine comes available, if it ever does, my heart of flesh will once again be a heart of stone. I will start believing what I am now feeling — people, even my loved ones, are to be feared and avoided. I will be content to stay inside and stay safe because I will have stopped feeling and stopped caring.

While I was becoming aware of all of this, I was writing a paper for my doctorate. A paper on the sovereignty of God.

And I began to think: what does it really mean, practically, for me to say that I believe God is in control? I'll tell you what I think I mean by it. I think that when I say, "God is in control,"  I'm saying something like, God has the power to make this all go away with a wave of his wand, and I'm pretty sure that he's going to do it right quick. (I know that's supposed to be an adverb. Poetic license.) He's going to inspire some brilliant scientist who is going to create a vaccine in, like, six months, and we'll all go back to normal living just like that, and we can look back on this year with a fond shudder and pat ourselves on the back for having survived the pandemic of 2020. He's going to somehow make this all go away even without the scientist, because, well, this is inconvenient. And it's horrible. And I hate it. And God is good, so he's going to just make it all disappear. Because, after all, he's in control. Maybe what some people mean is that they can act like idiots and go around licking doorknobs in public places because God will prevent them from getting sick. They can just ignore all government regulations (or suggestions) (or suggestions that become regulations -- it's hard to keep up with it all) because God is going to prevent the coronavirus from affecting their bodies the way it affects everyone else.

But what if that's not what it means? What does God’s being in control mean when the coronavirus doesn’t go away and there is no vaccine and I need to learn to live in this new reality? I have been focused on staying alive and keeping my loved ones alive. But what happens when the cost of staying alive comes at the price of living? What does God being in control mean when staying alive costs me love and I get fear instead?

When this whole thing started, I saw often this quote by Martin Luther: “Very well, by God’s decree the enemy has sent us poison and deadly offal. Therefore 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 infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence." Don't panic. Ask God to protect us. Wash your hands often. Avoid contaminated surfaces. And for goodness' sake, stay home. Socially distance. Flatten the curve. Etc. Basically, everyone stay alive.

But that quote is a four-line section out of an eight-page essay on how Christians in 1527 should respond during the bubonic plague. When I read the whole document, one thing became clear: there is no one right way to respond. Luther says, If you are needed, you should be available. If there is no one else available, you are obliged to help. If you are not needed, but are not afraid, you should stay. But if you are not needed, and you are afraid, you may flee the plague. However, he adds this caveat for those fleeing: "I am nevertheless in (God’s) hands in this danger as in any other which might overtake me. (His) will be done. My flight alone will not succeed of itself because calamity and harm are everywhere." I can try to protect myself from the coronavirus and I might catch it anyway. I could avoid COVID-19 and die from some other cause. There are no guarantees -- not in pandemics and not outside of them.

And earlier in the same document, Luther writes this: "What do all kinds of pestilence or devils mean over against God, who binds and obliges himself to be our attendant and physician? Shame and more shame on you, you out-and-out unbeliever, for despising such great comfort and letting yourself become more frightened by some small boil or some uncertain danger than emboldened by such sure and faithful promises of God!" Luther isn't saying, "Don't not fear the danger." He isn't saying, "There is no danger. Just go out there and live your life." He isn't arguing that it's all a mass-conspiracy to inhibit democratic freedom or anything of the like. In fact, he speaks harshly against those who have that attitude. He calls them murderers. Neither is he suggesting that we should go out and deliberately get sick just to get it over with. He calls that suicide. (Apparently the way people react to pandemics hasn’t changed very much in 500 years.)

Instead, Luther argues against allowing fear to override doing the right thing. He says, "The devil is such a bitter, knavish devil that he not only unceasingly tries to slay and kill, but also takes delight in making us deathly afraid, worried, and apprehensive so that we should regard dying as horrible and have no rest or peace all through our life. And so the devil would excrete us out of this life as he tries to make us despair of God, become unwilling and unprepared to die, and, under the stormy and dark sky of fear and anxiety, make us forget and lose Christ, our light and life, and desert our neighbor in his troubles." And that, I fear, is what I have been doing. I have seen people in pain and suffering, and rather than going to them, I have stood back for fear of getting sick. I have allowed the fear of getting sick, or the fear of loved ones getting sick, to shape my attitude toward people Jesus died for. It is hard to love someone I see as a plaguey bag of pestilence. It is hard to think kindly of those I see as threatening my physical wellbeing because they get too close to me in the grocery store. It is hard to live when I am focused solely on staying alive, as though staying alive is the most important thing and dying is so horrible it should be avoided at all costs. It is even hard to put aside my own comfort by putting on a mask for the sake of another's wellbeing.

In some ways, it would be easy to lock myself into my sterilised home and peer suspiciously through the drapes at the world out there, and tell myself that God is in control as I hope that I might wake up tomorrow to a world magically freed of the coronavirus. I would stay alive. But doing so is killing me. It is killing my soul. It is allowing fear to rule over trust in God. It is allowing my own attempts to control my wellbeing to rule over my trust that God is in control of my wellbeing. If I truly trust that God is in control, then I need to learn to live, not just survive, in a world with COVID-19. I don't quite know what that means yet. I know that part of it means that when I saw my mom this past week, I gave her a hug. We wore masks, and then after that, we Took our masks off, kept our distance, and visited outside, but not giving her a hug when I knew she needed one would have been wrong. Part of it means going to the barn and being truly happy to hang out with my friends there, physically distanced, to be sure, but not spending every second fretting about what I've touched or not touched or what they've touched or not touched. So, on Saturday, we were there together, and we celebrated a birthday and we had cake and lemonade and we sang Happy Birthday (dryly, not moistly) and we forewent the candles. We did our best to stay physically distanced, and we did well but not perfectly, and it was ok. It was wonderful. It felt almost ... normal. It might mean offering my neighbour a hug when he stands there crying because his dog died, instead of telling him (as I did) that I can’t hug him. (I’m ashamed of that now.)

Luther has one more word to say. "Everyone should prepare in time and get ready for death.... He should become reconciled with his neighbour and make his will so that if the Lord knocks and he departs... he has provided for his soul, has left nothing undone, and has committed himself to God." I've had the conversation. I've told my loved ones that I do not want to be put on a ventilator, should there ever come a time when I get COVID-19 and need one. I am ready to die. I know my Lord and Saviour. To depart from the body is to be present with Christ. The thought of being put into a drug-induced coma and to be hooked up to a machine that breathes for me for weeks on end, lying there totally alone, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits fill me with far more horror than the thought of dying to be with Christ. I am not looking to die, but saying that God is sovereign and that he is in control means that I do not need to fear dying. My life is in his hands. My loved ones' lives are in his hands. Should they die of COVID-19, I will grieve. I will cry my eyes out. It will hurt. But I will still adore my Jesus. I will know that they are in his hands, even as I am. And I will look with more longing than ever for the day when I am with them again.

There are no guarantees. There never have been. My father died over 20 years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19. I have lost many loved ones -- people whose losses have broken my heart and left me sobbing till I thought I might throw up. None of them died of the coronavirus. I am not going to allow this pandemic to harden my heart and fill me with fear and turn my belief that God is in control into lipservice and not heart service.

So what do I really mean when I say that God is in control? It means I believe that the revelation of God's glory will make every bit of this suffering today worth it. The day will come when I will stand before him and see his glory and recognise that every one of his decrees was good and right and glorious. It means I will step in where I am needed, however I am needed, even if it puts my life in danger. It means I will strive to keep my heart soft and not allow it to become calloused by fear and suspicion. It means I will obey stipulations and suggestions for the sake of others, even when they inconvenience me, but I will not trust that those stipulations or suggestions are what is keeping me healthy.

It means I will be willing to risk staying alive for the sake of really living, knowing that my life is in God's hands. I will truly live today, because today God has given me breath in my lungs. If tomorrow he takes the breath from my lungs, then "with my final heartbeat, I will kiss the world goodbye, then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side, and fly to Jesus, fly to Jesus, fly to Jesus and live!"