Fear is a powerful emotion. It can grip our hearts and minds and refuse to let go. There are so many things in this world we could fear, cancer, car crashes, pandemics, natural disasters, and the list could go on and on. But God doesn’t call us to hide in fear. One of the most repeated commands in the Bible is to “fear not” because God is bigger than any storms that come our way and is always by our side. The world was never safe before COVID-19 and it won’t be safe after. We can trust that in the midst of chaos that God is in control and NOTHING takes Him by surprise. Psalm 46: 1-2, 7 says, “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress (NLT).” In an article about C.S. Lewis and his response to living in a world with an atomic bomb, the editor writes, “The threat of death is serious, but it’s never novel. So let’s not succumb to panic. Let’s not allow fear to dominate our minds and paralyze our hearts. Let’s keep living and laughing and serving and enjoying those we love (yes, even if necessary, from a distance!). Because a good King is on the throne, we need not be slaves to fear.”* We don't have to live in slaves to fear because we have a hope that goes beyond this world. Our eternity is secure in Jesus, let's share that good news with the world!
Even though C.S. Lewis wrote this decades ago, the truth is still applicaible to our situation today. Here is his take on how to live in the age of the Atomic bomb (or the Coronavirus):
"In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”*
*Taken from https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/cs-lewis-coronavirus/. Read C.S. Lewis's full article here.