What's Comforting you in a time of Coronavirus?
What do you find comforting and reassuring in life in general and perhaps especially in the face of death?
Is that not a key question at this time?
We’re whingeing about the lockdown. But only the most risk embracing are recklessly ignoring the Government advice. We may know some among the 3,000 people who chose to congregate on Brockwell Park on Saturday. We may even have done the same on Peckham Rye. But most people are somewhat anxious at the prospect of getting the virus. The truth is, it could kill us. And we don’t want that.
So what comforts you in the face of death?
Back in the day, some old clever Christian dudes wrote an answer. OK, so it was 1563. It was in the German city of Heidelberg. And it was Zacharius Ursinus (no, me neither) who was the principal author of what became known at the Heidelberg Catechism.
Can you believe that the very first question they posed was this, ‘What is your only comfort in life and in death?
It sounds so contemporary.
This was their answer.
‘That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him’.
[Mic drop].
Boom! What an answer.
The truth is that there are lots of things that comfort us at the moment: Netflix, salted caramel ice cream, chardonnay, friends and not necessarily in that order. But none of them really comforts us in the face of death. I’m not about to trust any of those things to get me through death as much as I might like them. The question posed asks us to pick one. Just one. What’s the thing that’ll get you through life and death? What allows you to live in the present and face the future unafraid?
What’s your answer?
If we’re Christian then we belong to God. We’re his. And he will preserve us. That’s our security right there. And no one can ever take it from us. Ever.
Jesus put it this way, ‘And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day’ John 6:39&40.
So if you want rock-solid confident comfort in the midst of what could be the single most traumatic thing we’ve faced as a community, then look to the Son. Put your faith in Christ and receive his promise that he will raise you up on the last day to be with him in heaven for all eternity. We may not be saved from Coronavirus. It may get us. There are no divine promises of protection from Coronavirus. But there is the cast-iron promise of Jesus that he can save us through it.