CENTURY 21: Life 2.0

“. . .Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. . . .” / “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God” (1 Peter 4:12, 17)?

It has often been said that ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’  A juxtaposition is in order, for it can just as legitimately be said that ‘Catastrophe is in the experience of the victim.’ Let us put a little perspective on our current catastrophe, the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Tragedy is not exclusive to any one time, or place, or people, or cause.  It does not need to reach a quantitative threshold or ‘tipping-point.’  The condition or situation or disaster does not have to affect a million or a billion people to be as painful, disruptive, shattering or life-altering as can a single incident to a single person.  The person who is hit and maimed or killed by a D.U.I. driver, the passengers who die at the hands of a terrorist shooter or bomber, the little human being who is aborted, the teenager who is duped into trying drugs and his or her altered life (or death if an overdose or suicide is the outcome) shatter the family left in the wake of their hopes and dreams of seeing their son or daughter, brother or sister go down. The community that is hit by a devastating tornado, or wildfire, or localized flood, or entire nation by a famine.  The scenarios go on and on.

It doesn’t take a world war, or an economic depression, or a volcanic eruption or a pandemic such as we are in now to tip the scales to a radically-altered life-style for the survivors.  

So what we come down to is Life 2.0—our personal or national or global status-quo being radically altered.  It will be for all people at some point in their lives or in the lives of the survivors who are left to pick up the pieces.  We should not “think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you. . . .” 

The thing to understand is that it will come.  Knowing or believing that, we should be as prepared as we can for whatever eventuality is likely to come to us.  We should have a supply of food, water, medications, medical supplies, tools and fuel on hand.  We should have some cash on hand.  We should, all along, make wise decisions regarding the food we eat, the daily exercise we should get, the things we do or have done that make us vulnerable to being taken down: things such as our hygiene practices, our skills (or lack of them) regarding first aid, of how to grow things, financial management, practices leading to sound emotional strength and resourcefulness.  We need fitness for living.

At least as important as any of these things, as you might guess if you are familiar with any of my perspectives articulated in these essays over the years (and the scriptural citation at the beginning of this piece), is the importance of having the knowledge of why these trials must come about to all mortals, and what we can do about them.  What are our spiritual resources to help us cope and understand? 

If people would not reject out-of-hand the assertion that there is a people who believe that there is a Prophet of God on the earth, right now, and His Church, who have some answers and are at peace with them they could likewise better cope.

But, of course, there are far more than the 17 million souls who belong to this Church, who don’t believe and would rather put their trust in science, or CNN or Fox, or their government, or themselves, to weather this storm, and the next, and the next. 

Well, good luck. 

“And when [Jesus]was come into his own country, he taught them . . . insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?  Is not this the carpenter’s son?  And they were offended in him.  But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. . . and he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:53-58).