Times of crisis… they reveal to us who we really are on the inside.
It is natural in times of crisis to think that our primary task is to address the problem immediately before us. Right now that means the virus and the economy. How shall we protect ourselves and others? How shall we recover financially from the loss of weeks—possibly months—worth of work and pay
As a pastor, teacher, and restaurant worker, my life is not insulated from these concerns. My restaurant is closed. I’ve been teaching classes over the internet now for several weeks (ugghhh!). I’ve chosen to keep the church open, but not without the realization that this involves risk or that others may perceive it in a negative light. Each of you have your own stories to tell. None of our lives will be quite the same after this storm finally blows over, and our nation will probably never be quite the same either.
for all of us there will eventually come a trial that will mean our end.
Still, we must never forget that we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, and that fiery trials are the portion of the true Christian on his way to the heavenly city. Some trials we may bounce back from (especially if we are still young). Others we may survive but will still scar us for life (even Jesus, in the glory of his immortal body, still bore the scars of his earthly suffering). Still others we may never recover from. And for all of us there will eventually come a trial that will mean our end. Nevertheless, our salvation is nearer now than the day we first believed! (Rom. 13:11).
What matters above all else is not whether we in an earthly sense survive, but the people we reveal ourselves to be in the process. Victor Frankl, a best-selling author, psychologist, and survivor of the Holocaust writes in Man’s Search for Meaning: “On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return.”
… God allows us to go through times of trial, not so that he can find out what is going on in our hearts, but so that we can.
When God led Israel through the wilderness, he had this to say: Remember how I led you in the desert these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you, to see what was in your heart… (Deut. 8:2). That is a verse that should haunt us. Why should God need to test the people of Israel to see what was in their heart? Didn’t he know already?
The point is this… God allows us to go through times of trial, not so that he can find out what is going on in our hearts, but so that we can. While I pray that all of us will come through the present crisis intact, I also pray that we may be educated by it. For there is no test in this life that can compare with the one that awaits us when we stand before the Lord in the Day of Judgment. Especially this Easter season, as we look back to the resurrection of Christ, and as we look forward to the day of our own resurrection, let us live our lives in such a way as to be able to say with Apostle Paul: I have suffered the loss of all things and count them rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God that depends on faith (Phil. 3:9).
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