Don’t Waste Your Pandemic
John Piper published a book called Don’t Waste Your Life in 2003. Eight years later he published a short pamphlet after his bout with cancer: Don’t Waste Your Cancer. It’s a odd and provocative, isn’t it? It reframes our perspective, challenging us not to see cancer merely as a trial to get through but an opportunity to learn from.
I wonder if it would be helpful for Christians to make a similarly odd statement these days: don’t waste your pandemic. It’s even more odd. But it’s helpful. Because wouldn’t it be awful if after all this, Christians learned nothing?
I resonate with what Ray Ortlund recently said: “If we pastors and our churches get through this, only to return to ‘normal,’ with a sigh of relief but without repentance, without prayer, without courage, we will have wasted our historic moment. And then what more will the Lord have to do, to shake us awake?”
What do I need right now? Here are some questions I’ve been asking myself as a way to process how I might not waste this pandemic.
What is Dominating Your Mind?
First and foremost, I need my mind dominated by truth, not world news. Everything I read, watch, and listen to about the crisis in the world right now is unnerving. I am tempted to read it and meditate on it without filtering through the realities I see in Scripture. Unfiltered water can cause disease in the body; unfiltered news disease of the mind. World events need to be rightly filtered, interpreted, and processed. The truths of Scripture don’t remove problems, but they allow me to interpret them within God’s plan of redemption. That’s the framework I must fill my mind with: a sovereign God who is a heavenly father who is redeeming a broken creation through Jesus Christ for his glory. And in all this, if he cares for birds and flowers, he will certainly care for me, my family, and my church.
How Are You Guarding Your Heart?
Secondly, the truths in my mind need to be absorbed into my heart. In other words, God doesn’t merely want me to know the right things, but to feel the right things. His fatherly care is meant to produce rest and peace. His sympathetic ministry ought to cause me to feel understood, cared for, confident and assured. This means it’s critical that I continually rehearse truth to myself, not so much for rote memorization, but to feed my hungry heart. The first psalm encourages me to “meditate on the word day and night.” This is more than reading and memorizing -- it involves prolonged pondering. The shallow beds of trite cliches and pat answers are drying up; these are days we need to dig deep wells of truth for our souls.
Are You Watching Your Information Intake?
Third, I will not be able to do this without being more careful about my information intake. Certainty feels like control. I am tempted to try and gain mastery over this situation by seeking to follow every last detail of every news story, and all the latest prognoses. While it’s good to be informed, I am also noticing that the firehose of (often conflicting) reports can drown my soul. Continually grasping for more knowledge about the crisis does not help me grab hold of the Lord; it seems to be a subtle form of self-reliance (the more I know, the more I can control). More than ever, the principle of “devotion before distraction” is relevant.
What are Your Learning About Yourself?
Someone said, “the plague searches us,” and I am finding this to be true. I am learning a lot about myself these days. What am I hoping in? What were my expectations for my life? Do I really trust God to do good for me and for the church? Can I trust that Christ will care for the church in this time (even as I feel unable to)? Do I engage in escapism (trying to ignore problems by tuning out in various ways)?
And the regular questions I need to ask myself have been amplified: How do I lead my wife through this? My kids are cut off from the godly influence of the church, how am I discipling them? Is my leadership in the home life-giving or oppressive? Do I encourage or exasperate my kids? The stay-at-home order brings all these questions to the fore and we must deal with them.
The COVID-19 Classroom
I guess, in summary, what I’m realizing is that I have a lot to learn and the coronavirus crisis is the classroom in which God instructs me. And not just me -- God has enrolled the whole world in this course. What grace! He is not done with us! May this season of severe learning lead to another kind of outbreak - of robust truth, sacrificial love, holy zeal, fervent prayer, and all-in service. Let’s pray for a global awakening the church has never seen.
As C.S. Lewis has said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures...but shouts in our pains.” Are we listening? Am I listening?
