Emerging from Pandemic
March 2021
For weeks, provincial health officials and politicians have been speaking about the “light at the end of the tunnel.” While the public reporting on the Covid-19 deaths, case counts, and positivity rates continue, they are gradually being overtaken by encouraging, if not almost giddy, reports of increasingly large vaccine shipments due to arrive “in a matter of weeks.” Manitoba health authorities made a big splash when they announced that “vaccinations were now being extended to the general public!” Many of us got excited until we learned that they were referring to those aged 95 and over. Somehow that revelation quickly deflated the encouraging “balloon” of vaccinations coming to the general public in the near future.
So what should be our attitude in these “emerging times”? On the one hand, all of the indices of the pandemic’s impact (deaths, case counts, hospitalizations, ICU beds, positivity rates) are all trending down here in Manitoba. Capacity restriction limits are beginning to ease for most businesses, many recreational facilities, outdoor gatherings, even for indoor worship. While none of us are enjoying much of our daily lives being dictated by pandemic restrictions, we’ve become familiar with the disciplines. They have created a new structure in our lives that is at least manageable and predictable.
So have we become too comfortable – too complacent in continuing to live our “discounted” lives? Do we need to be stirred into courageous acts like the Hebrew exiles in Babylon when the prophet Isaiah challenged them, “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’ Here is your God … He will come and save you.” [Isaiah 35: 3, 4a,c]
On the other hand, there are those who continue to deny the seriousness of this pandemic, who scoff at any suggestion that they need a healthy fear of this virus and its impact. They continue to try and carry on living without any regard for the forces beyond their control. They are like the people we read about in the Letter of James, who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, (or a winter in the sunny south!) doing business and making money.” (or relaxing on the beach and getting a suntan.) [James 4:13 + (additions)]. Sadly, there are even a few Christian churches who have flaunted their disregard of the public health orders and, apparently in the name of faith, have “fearlessly” held large indoor gatherings for Sunday worship much to the embarrassment of the rest of the Christian Church.
As our knowledge of this coronavirus has grown, we have realized the seriousness of how quickly our health crisis and death toll can explode, and now, further complicated by the emergence of new virus variants. And by the time we become aware of rising cases, it seems too late to be able to contain them for at least weeks if not months before they begin to decline. Covid-19 is definitely a force to be reckoned with.
So how do we emerge from this pandemic? Should we even be trying to emerge before it becomes past history? If we are to take the Scriptural promises of God’s will for our abundant life with any seriousness, then we must emerge. If we really believe that our lives, and the lives of those around us, are in God’s hands, then we cannot passively withdraw and just wait for better times. We do need to take the Covid directives with complete seriousness and meticulously incorporate them into our daily lives. And at the same time, we need to continue to courageously embrace as full a life as we can – and encourage others to do the same. Because in doing so, we create hope for ourselves and for our communities, and we demonstrate faith, as Isaiah says, in a God who saves.
We can emerge successfully from this pandemic by incorporating a healthy and respectful “fear” of the infliction we are overcoming, and by embracing a hopeful and faithful courage as disciples of the One who saves.
