Each day we are increasingly aware of just how deeply the current pandemic is, and will continue to, affect our lives as individuals and a society. Both the breadth and depth of it’s impacts are slowly becoming known as we struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing reality. It is more and more evident that this will be a long term, rather than an a short term, event.

On every level, both corporately (from medical to economic to social) as well as personal (from psychological to emotional to spiritual), CORVID-19 is a unfolding crisis like we have never known.

Each succeeding generation must face it’s own tests; my grandparents had theirs, my parents were part of the “greatest generation”. This is ours.

Make no mistake, faith, including our most cherished beliefs and our spiritual communities, face a time of unprecedented challenge.

It is one thing to trust in God during a time of prosperity, when we feel secure, comfortable, and satisfied with life. It is quite another to believe when we are insecure, threatened, and fearful.

I thought perhaps that it might be helpful to share some thoughts with you during this time, and I hope that this may be of some small benefit. At least they will allow me to clarify my own thinking by committing them to writing.

So, please allow me to dive into the deep end of the pool……by starting with my most deeply held beliefs about God.

I do not believe that God is in charge of all things….at least not in the way that our attachment to the titles we use for God would imply.

We live in a universe and in a world where stuff happens. Sometimes, suffering is perpetrated by human beings, many times it is not. Crises and disasters, whether they affect us individually, regionally, or globally are not an “Act of God”. They just happen. They are an act of physics, weather, geology, or biology. They are completely amoral. They are indiscriminate. As human beings, we all must come to terms with the insecurity, unpredictability, and fear that come with life, it’s glaring imperfections and it’s relentless tragedies. This is one of life’s greatest challenges and it is not easy nor simple.

To believe that God will insulate us from harm is to discount and deny the witness of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures found throughout the Bible and the experience of countless others throughout history. The story of the Jews is filled with suffering, calamity, and hardship. To be the chosen people of God clearly did not mean the absence of suffering. It meant something quite different. It is no accident that the most profound and enduring prophetic writing was done during the times of greatest difficulties.

Likewise, the Christian scriptures, including both the words and experience of Jesus, are replete with examples of life in a capricious world. In fact, to profess the Christian Faith is to hold the suffering and death of Jesus “deep in our hearts”.

What we can rediscover in times of testing is that we are not alone. God is with us. While those may sound like superficial platitudes, in fact, they are consistent and profound statements reiterated throughout the Bible. God is most deeply and acutely present when we are the most vulnerable.

When the future seems so uncertain, when suffering on many levels is so apparent, when so much that threatens us is beyond out control….our belief that in spite of isolation, God is with us, that He shares the experience, (including the grief and loss), makes a huge difference.

This is the time when our relationship with God can be the most intense and profound. This can be a time of the most powerful and lasting spiritual transformations. When pride, self satisfaction, arrogance, and complacency are stripped away, when they are replaced by humility, dependence, openness, and vulnerability, both our hearts and our spirits are opened in a new way.

We will eventually emerge from this time and find that we are different people. The question is “What will this change look like?” Will we be bitter, lost in grief for what “used to be”, angry and even more fearful; or will we have the wisdom and grace to allow God to work is us in a new way.

Is it possible that this could be a spiritual expedition……..

“For God alone my soul in stillness waits……”

“A broken and contrite heart O God, thou will not despise…”

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…God is with me”….you know the rest….

More to follow….