Finding peace in the middle of Coronavirus
Currently, there is a lot of fear going around about COVID 19. While it is little discussed directly, I believe the basic fear of Coronavirus is death. Our death or that of someone we love.
Here is a brief account of my experience with death and life and the lessons I learned the very hard way. I am hopeful they will help you find peace in this uncertain time.
My brother Mike and I started out our life together as competitors, frenemies. He was a year and a half younger than I and could become upset pretty easily. In our early years I took advantage of that tendency for my own perverse enjoyment. I called his stuffed dolphin a fish just because it upset him and his reaction entertained me. We fought and argued about anything almost constantly.
However, when we reached our late teens and we realized we wouldn't have each other to fight with forever, things shifted. And after he was diagnosed with leukemia we became best friends through the process of his treatment and his willingness to listen to my problems. By God's grace and great medical care he survived and was cured. However, just a couple years later he got a septic infection and was dead within a couple weeks. Neither us had reached 30.
I have learned I need to live every day ready to go, because I just might.
I will probably die with the vivid memory of holding his hand when they pulled out the ventilator tube. I can still almost hear the beeping of the heart monitor slowing, stopping and feeling his hand literally grow cold within seconds.
Truthfully, I wasn't really right in my head for about two years. It felt like my world had ended, and I couldn't understand why nothing seemed to change around me. People just kept going to work, school, church, and having fun. It felt like no one cared. That somehow it just didn't matter that he had died. For a long time I believed I could never be happy again in fact for a while it felt wrong for me to be happy. Until one day I asked myself the question, “What would Mike want me to do?” Then I realized he would want me to live, to be as happy as I could be.
I finally came to realize, the best way to honor him and how he had made my life better, was to live as fully and completely as I could.
I also learned any of us can go at any time. This was underscored for me just a few years later when a colleague’s son died instantly in a head on car collision at around age 19. With that in mind I have learned I need to live every day ready to go, because I just might.
For me that means living at peace with God. To daily invite him to remove my character and transplant his perfect character into me (Psalm 51:10) so that I increasingly live according to his perfect design and fulfill my greatest destiny.
Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day
I screw up a lot. But I have a confident hope because God has promised, “…that he who began a good work in you (me) will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6 NIV) And the evidence is that behind the daily mistakes I see that I'm different now from what I was. How I think about others, what matters most to me, and even the things I like and do have changed because he is changing me.
I have to cooperate, to be sure, but the changes clearly demonstrate I am on the right path. Because of that I can join Paul in his confidence, “8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me…” (2 Timothy 4:8 NIV) Because it isn't just for me I am sharing this with you. Not only can you have peace with God but the crown of righteousness comes with eternal life in perfection.
Every single person reading this and I myself will ALL die unless Christ comes before our life ends. The ONLY thing the Coronavirus can do is make it happen sooner and when you're ready today that’s just not so scary.
Now don’t get me wrong, I wash my hands more often, I use my feet to open doors when possible, grocery trips are less often and when we do go out, it is usually to a wide open spaces in nature where social distancing is practically built in.
I’d prefer not to get sick and I’d certainly prefer to live, but if the Coronavirus does take me out, I know I’ll wake at Christ’s coming to receive my everlasting crown. And in the mean time, I can live with passion today without fear of dying tomorrow.
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