Life can be hard. Let me repeat that. Life can be HARD. Should I say that again?
During this COVID-19 crisis, we face the temptation to succumb to fear, doubt, anger, frustration, self-pity, maybe even despair. We can feel overwhelmed with all that is going on around us and in our own lives. We can find ourselves asking, “What if?” and “How long?, and “Why, Lord, why?”
Sometimes in our trials, all can seem lost with no reason to hope. The enemy mocks us with his lies. “God doesn’t really care.” “He’s abandoned you.” “You must have done something wrong to deserve such pain.” “Why don’t you just give up.” Or the worst one, “Maybe God doesn’t even exist.”
Can you imagine how Jesus’s disciples must have felt as they watched His crucifixion? Talk about disillusionment and bewilderment. Talk about discouragement and despair. Their teacher, their best Friend, hung on a cross, subjected to one of the most horrific and shameful forms of execution ever concocted by the perverse minds of sinners.
He was their conquering hero, their Messiah. They’d seen Him heal the blind and lame, give life to the dead. He’d taught them with unparalleled wisdom, walked on water, calmed the stormy sea, and multiplied food that fed thousands. They’d expected Him to ride out to triumph over their Roman oppressors and make Israel great again. Instead He died, His brutalized body laid to rest in a borrowed tomb. Their dreams lay shattered as well in the bloody dust of Golgotha.
How had it all gone so wrong? Where was God now? Numb and in shock, the disciples stumbled back to the pieces of their lives.
And in its insanity, evil celebrated. Yeah! God was dead. Or so the demons thought.
Then came a great earthquake as angels clothed in blinding glory descended to earth. They rolled away the stone to the tomb as the men who guarded it fainted with terror and the Savior walked out alive. The women who’d followed and ministered to His earthly needs saw the place where He had laid and hurried to the disciples, breathless with the news that the Master had risen. One named Mary Magdalene had even seen and touched Him.
Impossible. But true. He came through locked doors, through solid walls to where His friends huddled in fear. He showed them His wounds in real flesh, breath in a real body, stripes of the whip on His back; life eternal in the eternal Live Giver.
Jesus came to earth with eternity in mind–our eternity with Him–and His with us. He endured thirty-three years of our slowness of heart and mind, our arrogance and selfish agendas, our hatefulness, jealousy, and murderous schemes. Because of the joy of redemption set before Him, He endured the shame of the cross and rose again. He is now seated at the right hand of the Father far above all rule and authority and any name but His own. (Hebrews 12:2)
He calls us to endure with eternity in mind as well, not for our sake alone, but for the sake of those still lost in their fear, despair or vain, selfish ambition and emptiness. No one but the Lord knows when or how the COVID-19 crisis will end. Only He knows what will ultimately result from it all. We may find ourselves perplexed and beset, weary and sorrowing, tempted to give up. But He wants us to know that no matter how bad things get, He is unimaginably stronger and wiser, and He will work all things out for good. Nothing escapes His marvelous sovereignty.
The resurrection displayed God’s unmatched power and left the disciples reeling with awe-struck joy and indestructible hope. In the same way, there will be a resurrection that overcomes the COVID-19 virus and every other trial in our lives. We will see the day when all pain, sickness, evil, disease, and death will be vanquished, when the heavens and the earth will be created anew and where God will live and reign among us. Romans 8:18, Rev. 21:1-7
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