Coronavirus and the Kingdom of God: we reap what we sow
by Graham Wood, Archbisop Cranmer:
This is the 10th contribution to His Grace’s emergency team ministry during the coronavirus pestilence. It comes from Graham Wood, an ex-police local government officer, now retired, and author of Israel: Land of Promise or Promise of Land?.
What is the relevance of the coronavirus crisis to the Kingdom of God?
There must be many Christians who will be thinking about the above question: how to make sense of the coronavirus pandemic which is both a deadly threat to the lives of people globally not experienced since the great flu epidemic of 1918, but which will also change the economic stability of all nations, and the future of countless homes and family life for the foreseeable future in an unprecedented way.
The obvious question for any Christian to ask is: ‘What is God saying to us through this crisis?’ How are we to view it in the light of the Bible and the gospel?
Up to the present in the UK, there appears to be little by way of answers from our spiritual leaders as to the significance of the tragic events which are unfolding every day. The Episcopal Bench, too, has remained strangely silent just at the time when a strong spiritual lead is needed.
For example, the central message from the Archbishop of Canterbury in a Lambeth Palace address recently was to urge people to “care for others in person or virtually during this strange and difficult time… and to keep life going”. But these are commonplace virtues and day-to-day obligations irrespective of any new crisis, and conspicuous by its absence was any hint of a message being sent from God to nations and peoples at this time. Anodyne banalities will not answer deeper questions which arise.
By contrast, in 1865 England experienced a devastating experience of foot and mouth disease that threatened the nation’s food supply by killing their cattle, and a vicar by the name of JC Ryle described the event as ‘the finger of God‘ (Ex 8:19). He faithfully applied the spiritual lessons to be learned from the national crisis.
Should we then discern the finger of God in today’s crisis? I suggest we should even on the simplest of principles, that we only reap what we sow.
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