So. Right now we are in the midst of a shutdown to try to slow the spread of Coronavirus. Everyone is scared. I was trying to figure out if I am more or less scared than I was at 9/11, and I have settled on: Less scared.
I think it is because this disease seems so directly from God's hand rather than the hand of an enemy and so lacks the same feeling of evil directed against us. I was thinking about David after he conducted the census he shouldn't have (II Samuel 24) and was given three options by the prophet:
‘Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’” So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”
David answers:
“I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”
and I have to agree. Then you look at the numbers...
So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men. 16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.”
Wow! 70,000 in three days in a very small area geographically. Praise God for His mercy in staying the hand of destruction, and may He be pleased to do so again very soon.
I think it is because this disease seems so directly from God's hand rather than the hand of an enemy and so lacks the same feeling of evil directed against us. I was thinking about David after he conducted the census he shouldn't have (II Samuel 24) and was given three options by the prophet:
‘Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’” So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”
David answers:
“I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”
and I have to agree. Then you look at the numbers...
So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men. 16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.”
Wow! 70,000 in three days in a very small area geographically. Praise God for His mercy in staying the hand of destruction, and may He be pleased to do so again very soon.
