In this day and age; in this time of threatening illness and death, there seems to be little comfort. We humans who believe in a loving God have been thwarted in our worship, and turned away from the communities which give us the support we need to be in a relationship with the God we desperately want to love. We have little choice but to remain separate and solitary, with a strong feeling of abandonment, and loneliness. It is that, or suffer the fate the illness may bring. 

This pandemic is not unique; there have been others. One, some hundred years ago, took the lives of many. It was called the World War one, or Spanish Flu. It spread like wildfire and took many lives before it disappeared. Another, the Black Plague or bubonic plague took many lives in Europe and North Africa in the 14th century. The death toll was in the millions. 

All of these instances of sicknesses, that indiscriminately took the lives of many people were eventually overcome; and a factor that is sometimes missed in retrospect is that a belief, and an adherence to the worship of God continued, and sometimes became stronger. God was with us through the pandemic, and offered reassurance with his presence.

What the illness can not harm is our faith, and the relationship we choose to have with God. We make that choice because it is a very logical thing to do. Paul, in teaching the people of Athens cited seeing an altar there with an inscription that said, “To an Unknown God.” He then schooled the Athenians, telling them about the God we know, “The God who made the world and everything in it, He who is Lord of Heaven and earth,” Paul said, “does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since He himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.”

If you believe in God as the creator, as the word that spoke and all things came to be, this is a logical belief; and it only causes us too conclude, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

“If we are His offspring, we ought not to think the Deity is like Gold, or silver or stone, an image formed by the Art and imagination of Mortals.”

All this being said, and the logic that it follows, should lead us to continue to laud and Praise God through any pandemic, any travail, any survival of threat. For we know life was created by God, and will continue with His blessing. AMEN 

The Rev. George O. Martin is an Ordained Deacon at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 17th and Adams, Great Bend. Send email to georgeom@hbcomm.net.