Thursday, June 16, 2022
You Can Say Whatever You Like,
But That’s a Lake,
As Sure As Covid is
a Serious and Deadly Pandemic.
Exodus 23:25
You shall worship the Lord your God, and I will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you.
Matthew 6:31-32
Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
Words of Grace For Today
Quite sure sickness is rampant among us. Coming out the back end of the Covid pandemic, and it’s not done with us yet by any means, is anyone ready to say that as we worship God our food and bread is blessed and we have all sickness taken away from among us? Covid is simply so contagious that measures to stop it are useless (well not really but people are no longer willing to pay the small price of wearing masks and keeping physical distance and restricting their social interactions to a small group of people so … well so measures are not kept and therefore governments are giving up on keeping them). The greatest sickness is exemplified by the guy who says Covid was a big hoax. Tell that to the families of all the people who died!
I’m sure that if I do not work hard for wood to heat with in the winter, and persist to find money to buy groceries with and show up at the food bank to supplement the ever smaller amount of groceries I can afford, and, and, and … I am sure if I do not strive heftily, I will meet my physical death.
So these passages are difficult to hear.
The truth of the matter is, when we worry about food and water, rather than actually working to ensure we have them, our worry sucks the life right out of us.
The truth of the matter is, sickness will never be wiped out from among us, not completely, and when we either think that it can be and behave like it has been or we ignore that sickness is part of life, we endanger ourselves and so many people around us.
The truth of the matter is that God created the world and said it was good! Hunger, poverty, drought, thirst, illness and death are part and parcel of our being able to choose to either love God or not.
Today is another day of opportunity: to ruin our days with worry and denials of sicknesses and death OR to enjoy our days with thanks for everything God gives us, and appropriate work to secure our daily needs and have enough to share with those without enough, and to live sensibly and cautiously so as to foster our own health and the health of those around us.
What’ll it be today for you?