After The Coronavirus (Covid-19) Decrees- What Do You Have Left?

After The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Decrees- What do You Have Left?

3/22/2020 1 Samuel 27:1-7 Romans 8:28--39

Sometimes life throws us some real punches. There’s not a soul here today that hasn’t received its share of blows from the orders, edicts, closing and suggestions being given out by our government officials over COVID-19. Just as we duck to dodge one punch, another comes to take its place. One thing we can be sure of, is that there are more blows yet to come.

Our losses have been real no matter what our ages. Young and old athletes didn’t get to play this season when they had been looking forward to it all year. High school track records that were going to be set, will never enter the record books by the people who would have set them.

The loss of your high school senior year is a tremendous blow for many of our students. There were scheduled proms that will never happen. Valedictorians, Salutatorians, MVPS and the like will never be named. The graduations that bring us together as a family tradition won’t be there this year.

We were to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of our members today, but that won’t happen, and she won’t turn 100 again. Weddings have been cancelled after all those hours of planning, scheduling and spending money. Even funerals are being told to be put on hold. Jobs that we thought were secure, have been snatched out from under us. Surely we thought if we had our own business, we could determine our economic future.

We thought if we got sick, we could go to the doctor’s or to the hospital. We were certain, that our church would always be open, but many are closed. These are just the tip of the iceberg of the many problems staring us in the face. Some of us have no idea how we will pay our bills when we are looking at our last paycheck this coming week.

Whether we know it or not, there is an emotional pain and frustration building up inside each of us. We can’t have loss after loss and not be hurting. We can’t even plan our lives two weeks out, because for the first time we are realizing we really are not even in control of our own lives. At a time when we probably need to hug each other and cry the most, we are told to practice social distancing.

This could lead us down a path of despair, of fear, or of anger. But I want to challenge us. Instead of focusing in on what we have lost, we need to see what it is we have left, that God can still use on our behalf. Sometimes we can miss out on something because of a failure to search and to find what we have left.

Do any of you remember as a kid wanting to buy some cookies or some ice cream but not having any money to do it? I can remember as kids back in the 60’s, my brothers and I we would look in every nook and cranny of the sofa to find us a coin or two. We’d look in the closet on the floor, and we’d check every old pocketbook we could find. We rejoiced just as much in putting together ten cents as someone who had won the lottery. We found out there was often more left than we had first thought.

There are some blows that the virus has thrown, but they have not put a dent or taken away what God says about us. God’s word declares 1 Peter 2:9-10 (NIV) 9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

My friends, who we are is based on our relationship to Jesus Christ. The decrees related to the coronavirus, doesn’t stop us from be a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation or a people belonging to God.

Even if the next decree is to stop worship services, that still does not change who we are in God. It still does not dismantle the church because Jesus said I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. We simply have to rethink how we do worship. There were no church buildings for the first two hundred and fifty years of the church’s existence, but they were faithful in worshiping God.

We still have the same job to declared the praise of Him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful life.