Our guest post today is by a very dear friend of mine who I’ve known for thirteen years: Ms. Hilda Kaguma. She generously and willingly shares her thoughts during these unprecedented times and how she has been coping. Read more articles on the pandemic here.

“We are living in unprecedented times,” this is what I have heard the media describe the global pandemic that caught the world off guard. The Bible gives us a perspective that these times are not particularly unprecedented, perhaps only in light of what we call the postmodern world. It is essential to remind ourselves that we have had many different seasons of pandemics—the COVID-19 pandemic being a first of its kind—in world history. It’s probably possible that this will not be the last generation to experience this.

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

— (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Unprecedented times ahead

I remember in early April when the death toll in Italy was at a horrifying climax. Living in Africa, the death toll led me to pray desperately for Africa in light of our weak health care system and communal living. Knowing the unprecedented economic recession that awaits us leaves me afraid. However, I’m comforting myself that as long as my loved ones stay alive, and we do not starve, we should be ok. But indeed, this is the bare minimum, and as a Christian, God offers.

A broken world

Through reading about history and the different pandemics, I thought less about the world coming to an end. Regardless, whether it is or not, I’m ready. It is imperative that Christians stay prepared in and out of season. Whatever God’s sovereignty has charged to give us—be it pandemics and death or health and life, it is all good. Scripture encourages us always to stay ready for the imminence of death, disease, and suffering. It is part of our broken world.

Is the pandemic a punitive result from God?

I have heard it said that this pandemic is a punitive result from God, and I have seen many countries set-aside days to pray for repentance. I was encouraged to see many turn to God and ask Him to lift the disease from our planet and that He may change our ways. Through this pandemic, we see God working His good by causing suffering, which has driven people to their knees to repent. As Romans 8:28 says;

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

I cannot say with certainty whether this disease is the outcome of specific sins in our world today, but what I know is that all that is wrong in the world is because of sin, the first sin that corrupted our human nature. What is essential now for Christians is to know that whatever God has handed to us is not to condemn us but to make us more like Him; to refine us like silver. Christ rescues us from condemnation since He is the object of our faith, and he satisfied God’s wrath in his death. God, in His sovereignty, will allow things to happen to us that may not become apparent to us in this present age, but we know that His thoughts are higher than ours and His ways different than ours.

Life is a mist. So…

Through this pandemic, the utter mortality and fragility of man are relentlessly discernable.  The impermanence of our lives, as described in scripture, like a mist that appears for a little while, then vanishes is palpable. May we take this season of death and sorrow to hold fast to the giver of life and desire to be with Him in eternity.  May Psalm 27:4 ring true in our hearts like it did in David’s;

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”