Day 56: "Has the Pandemic Changed Who We Are?"

DAY 56

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

WEEK EIGHT: SATURDAY 9 MAY 2020

Has the Pandemic Changed Who We Are?

“Beloved brethren, what is it, what a great thing is it, how pertinent, how necessary, that pestilence and plague which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the righteousness of each one … to see whether they who are in health tend the sick; whether relations affectionately love their kindred; whether masters pity their languishing servants; whether physicians do not forsake the beseeching patients.”  Cyprian, c. 200-258  

Cyprian was the Bishop of Carthage on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. A pandemic swept across the Roman empire that was labeled by subsequent historians as the Plague of Cyprian, not because he caused it, but because he emerged as the primary record keeper of what happened. So detailed were his accounts that epidemiologists today can identify the particularly virulent form of plague that ravaged the empire, killing 5,000 a day in Rome.

And what is the question he is asking? Whether or not we remain the same people in a time of plague that we were before it all started. How do we handle, how do we respond to, tests and trials?  God has a formula for responding to, and a purpose in, such times: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4       

It’s an intriguing way in which Cyprian casts the role of a pandemic, that it “… searches out the righteousness of each one …” It’s not a matter of us having the virus, rather it’s a matter of the virus ‘having us,’ its very presence on the planet eliciting from within us a behavioral statement about who we are. Consistency of commitments, and an increased desire to live in such a way that others may see Christ in us in the midst of crisis, serves notice on the virus that in Jesus we remain in control of our lives, and that He who wastes nothing will use the virus to sharpen and refine who we are in Him during this time of trial and testing.

Reflective question: Simply put – who are you during this pandemic? Have you changed?

Reflective Scripture: Philippians 1:27 – “… conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

Reflective hymn:

“I Want to Be Like Jesus” – Thomas Chisholm (1866-1969)

I have one deep, supreme desire, that I may be like Jesus.

To this I fervently aspire, that I may be like Jesus.

I want my heart, His throne to be, so that a watching world may see

His likeness shining forth in me. I want to be like Jesus.