Grab a Torch: Our Only Hope during Covid-19

Grab a Torch: The Only Hope during Covid-19

The Diagnosis:

Things are hard right now for everyone. There are some impoverished families with unemployed parents, and some kids are quarantined with abusive parents. There are some millionaire celebrities with luxurious mansions sobbing uncontrollably over their loneliness. There are middle class tech workers working in Teams meetings from home having a drink or two an hour to cope with the fact there are no sports and no bars to escape to in order to blow off steam on the weekends. Not to mention the exhausted nurses serving Covid-19 patients living in excess fear due to the fear that they could infect their family every time they serve the common good. I could say the same similar things for grocery store employees, amazon employees, cooks and all the others on the front line. We all feel broken right now. It is a brokenness we always carry and this is nothing new.

The truth is we were all born with a cord severed. That which gave us life and brought us into the world. Not an umbilical cord. Though we should love our mothers, we should love the one who gave us our mothers and fathers. That would be God, the God of the universe whom you are born separated from. God is real. God created you. God has always sought a relationship with you. God has always sought you. The reason you feel broken and alone is because perhaps for the first time in your life you are stuck in the reality of your existence. We are all separated from God. There is something off about us and there always has been. It is called Sin, and it is what separates us from God.

We were made in Gods image: sentient, reasonable, logical, loving, caring, strong, supportive and creative. We were given a garden to rule in, just as a child is given a jungle gym under the careful watch of a loving parent. We had no worries, but we chose instead what we thought was liberty. We chose the mortgages, the insurance payments, the funerals, the payments on the new sets of breaks and so much more. We chose murder for protection. Sexual assault for control, and liquor for our comfort. W

We are born cold, dead, and lifeless. We can not find the spark to bring us back to the days of simplicity. We can call ourselves “Fire Starters”, we can look “Hot” and we feel “Heat” with one another. But it all burns out. We cannot be satisfied. So we go back to the well. We draw more water. We quench our thirst but return to that same well. Exhausted, some of us burnout and people won’t be seen with us. We have to work odd hours and we are outcast. Some of us are not. But now in this Covid-19 virus nightmare those lines are becoming blurry. The “haves” and the “have nots” are meeting at one place: despair in the cold darkness. We inherited sin, which set us on course to destruction, and we still choose to commit it daily increasing the pace in which we sail into darkness.

We are a blip in the history of the Universe. In the full tapestry of time we are barely a speck on a single piece of thread. It makes sense we are in cold darkness. The closest star is 93 million miles from Earth. The Sun gives life, grows our food, and holds us in place. Although that helps us live, it doesn’t give us a reason for why we live. We still have the Sun right now and it won’t protect us from Covid-19. It won’t comfort us past our daily walks from our houses.

The Cure:

We need God. A God who is perfect, a God who is personal. A God who is pure light with no darkness in him. A God who is loving and kind and one that seeks after us. The problem is we can not make this God up. This God must be real on his own terms. We can not wish him into existence. And if he is real and if He is what Christianity claims then we must take him at his word. We can’t change him, he can only change us. We can’t tell him how we should think we should live, he can only tell us. We are dead in our sins and it infects our minds, hearts, and spirits, so how could we hope to know better than the one who created us?

So let us look at this God, this savior that Christianity claims is real. What does he want? If he has all the power in the universe and can do what he wants in all of existence within this vast universe. What does he want? He wants you to glorify Him. He loves you, and he created you for his Glory. What does this mean? God created you so that your greatest desire was to know him. He is the ultimate fulfilling fire. That which purges us of iniquity and warms our soul. He is a never-ending wellspring of life within us. He is real and he knows that only he can satisfy you. So he calls you to himself.

He has unlimited power and He chose you. The Good News of the christian faith is that God came in the form of man and that he being God and man lived a perfect life without sin so that he could die the death we deserved for our sin. He died to connect us back to the source of light, truth and love that we were born craving. God sent Jesus to die for you and he died an awful and painful death by roman crucifixion. Then on the 3rd day, he resurrected defeating sin and death. God handed Jesus all authority over the Earth and he is in complete control. One day he will return to restore all things to perfection.

Until the day when Christ returns, a Christian must stand between two worlds. We must live in this dead and dying world that Christ will restore one day with the hope and warmth of the never ending presence of God within us from the Holy Spirit. God has given every Christian a light, in a way that they are almost a torch. We are to walk in the darkness as beacons of light calling people to the source. We are beggars showing others where the bread is. We are dancing paralytics, and former slaves now called sons and daughters.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Bible tells us, we are told that life is a vapor. It looks real but it can not be held on to. The second we think we have grabbed it, it fades into nothingness. The Covid-19 outbreak has shown us how many of the things we love are simply distractions made out of vapor. They are futile to chase because they do not last. We will all experience loss, whether it be financially or with our own life. The only thing we can hold is the outstretched hand of God that offers us love and light now, with greater hope of eternity with him once we die.

Dear Christian, take up your cross, and realize that your purpose is to be a torch to share the light of Christ to the world. He is the one and only true way to heaven. Whether Covid-19 last or not, it is just one of many things trying to kill you and the people you love. In these hard times, we must trust God and be willing to bring people to him because he is the only hope we truly have in this life. We need to be saved from Sin more than we do from Covid-19. In Christ, we have eternal life and we can find rest today in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Dear non-Christian, realize that I say this all with a heart that weeps for your soul to be saved. I can spend hours upon hours giving you reasons to believe in Christ based on science, logic, history, archeology, and so much more. But more importantly, I offer you, Christ. Call upon the one that the prophets of old spoke about. The maker of the cosmos and the lover of your soul. Believe in your heart and confess with your tongue that Jesus can save you, before it is too late.

Grace and Peace.

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