Stories from the Covid19 front lines

I believe there is another illness infecting Anerica.... Cabin Fever! I went to the Blacksburg Sweet Frog and was told that the lady would have to fix up my frozen yogurt and I would have to eat it on my motorcycle outside!

 

Yeah, well, mini AOC is tweeting that Bill Clinton says he invented social distancing on his honeymoon....

 

Ouch!

 

I think there are some others on the frontlines also, maybe less prestigious, but indispensable and deserving. That's our grocers fast-food workers. I thank them every chance I get.

The other day I thanked my Walmart cashier. She had the task of limiting people to one carton of eggs when they ignored the sign and tried to carry off a stack. Very graciously she stopped them and explain the rules. She was awesome, and never lost her smile or sense of humor.

Let's not forget, these individuals are also in high-risk positions given their exposure. There are warriors all around us.

 

Don't forget truckers and stock clerks.

 

I want to share something with you that has encouraged me today.

Yesterday on the U.K. news I was hearing of the tremendous pressure that doctors and nurses are under in many of the London hospitals due to the dreaded coronavirus. A doctor was telling of the huge difficulties in the Intensive Care wards of her own hospital and how hard the staff are finding it to cope. She remarked that many of the doctors were praying for the first time ever as they began their shifts.

I did not get the impression that the lady was a believer or that she was commending the prayers. Rather, she was saying that these doctors had become completely exhausted and had arrived at the end of their own resources, to the point where they would commit even such an irrational act as prayer. And of course, when faced with an ever-growing influx of desperately ill people, with barely enough room or equipment to cope, even the strongest and fittest doctors will find themselves utterly drained and demoralized.

Yet this woman’s words filled me with a strange optimism. Surely God has a gracious purpose in this pandemic? ‘For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the sons of men’ (Lamentations 3:33). I believe that he has permitted it for this very reason; to bring men to the end of themselves and lead them to cry out to him (Psalm 107:6). If they have prayed to the Lord for strength with even as much true faith as a grain of mustard seed, God will answer their request. ‘He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint’ (Isaiah 40:29-31).

So let’s be praying for the medics all over Britain, but especially in London where the epidemic is more severe, that God will indeed give them the strength to cope, but more particularly that God will lead many of them to faith at this time. Let’s pray also for those who are elderly, sick or both, who are especially susceptible to this disease. In their worry and fear may they too cry out to the Lord and may he give them that peace that passes all understanding and the knowledge that nothing can happen to them that is outside of the will of a gracious God. May they be able to say with Paul, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Finally, I want to leave you with an episode in the life of Charles Spurgeon. He became the Pastor of a New Park Street church in London at the age of just nineteen. In the following year:

An epidemic of Asiatic cholera at that time began to rage in London, particularly in the area south of the Thames. Spurgeon cancelled all out-of-town engagements and gave his time to visiting the sick. The disease entered numerous homes. Almost everywhere there was suffering, and often there was death. “family after family” he says, “Summoned me to the bedside of the smitten and almost every day I was called to visit the grave.” With lovingkindness to the sick and heart-felt sympathy with the bereaved he conducted this labour, and at any hour of the night he might be awakened with an urgent request to come and pray with someone who seemed about to pas into eternity.

Under this unremitting labour he soon became utterly exhausted. He was not only tired but was becoming sick himself.

In this condition, as he returned one day from a funeral,he noticed a piece of paper pasted up in a shoemaker’s window. To his delight he found it carried a verse of Scripture: “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most high, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come night thy dwelling’ (Psalm 91:9-10).

As Spurgeon read this verse, his outlook was suddenly lifted. “faith appropriated the passage as her own,” he says. “I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying in a calm and peaceful spirit, and I suffered no harm.”

From Spurgeon, a New Biography, by Arnold Dallimore, Banner of Truth, 1985.

 

And those making food deliveries to the home such as Doordash, Ubereates