COVID-19 series, #17: Do not waste your COVID-19 experience

19 Pastoral Thoughts on COVID-19

COVID-19 series, #17: Do not waste your COVID-19 experience

“When a scoffer is punished, the simple becomes wise; when a wise man is instructed, he gains knowledge” (Proverbs 21:11).

If you are a believer who is well instructed in the Scriptures, you know that God is not reacting in panic to the COVID-19 situation. He caused it to happen otherwise it would have never happened.

As we saw previously, pain is God’s megaphone to awaken a world that is asleep in sin. In God’s inscrutable ways, he often uses one catastrophe to teach different people different lessons. It is up to us to be sensitive and ask ourselves, “What is God teaching me here?”

Sadly, the book of Proverbs teaches that when scoffers are punished or chastised by God, they never learn. The ones who learn from the punishing of the scoffers are the simple. They are the ones who become wise.

In Proverbs 17:10 we read that “A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.” Judging from the number of deaths, and the global economic and social shut down, there is no doubt that COVID-19 has been a very loud rebuke to all of us.

Pause for a moment today and ask yourself the question, “What deep spiritual lesson have I personally learned during this COVID-19 pandemic? Has it weaned me from my love of the things of this world? Has this experience deepened my personal prayer life? Has it caused me to draw closer to God?”

I tremble for individuals in whose lives a hundred blows bear no fruit. Please, do not waste your COVID-19 experience!

“When doubts and fears arise,

  Teach me Thy way;

When storms overspread the skies,

  Teach me Thy way.

Shine through the cloud and rain,

Through sorrow, toil, and pain;

Make Thou my pathway plain,

  Teach me Thy way.”

—Benjamin Mansell Ramsey (1849-1923)