The Glaring Truth Not A Single One of Us Can Deny

Here’s what’s clear to us in March that may have eluded us in January – each one of us impacts more lives than we ever imagine.

A microscopic virus has illustrated that each life touches another and can affect worldwide change.

We are viral in scope – no matter how small we feel.

The idea that our individual lives are insignificant is a convenient illusion we Christians embrace to comfort ourselves when our efforts to represent Jesus feel overwhelming, ineffective, or hard.

Jesus was God but He came into the world hundreds of years before social media and took on human form – one man. His disciples could barely agree on how to secure lunch prior to the cross but after the cross, as witnesses of the resurrection, they went viral.

Peter, James, John, Paul, Mary and the rest could not have imagined the scope of their testimonies, but I don’t get the impression from the New Testament that they wasted much time fretting over it.

They devoted their lives to telling others the truth they knew. They lived so that the Holy Spirit had free reign to work through them, and every person they touched made a choice to accept that truth or reject it. And here we are.

Each of us is so potent our enemy has had to flood the air with a great deception that we don’t matter. This pandemic reminds us that we do.

From the most powerful world leader to the homeless beggar who has forgotten her own name, we have the same potential to pass on what we carry within us – sickness, cynicism, fear, doubt, corruption, evil, and death or health, hope, life, light, love, and the truth – the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God, in His mercy, and us, if we’re paying attention, can transform this moment of global panic into the greatest resurgence of faith the world has ever seen. The only question is this – will we choose the comfort of the convenient delusion or will we choose the courage to go viral with the gospel? Because we can no longer deny that we can.

“But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
¹⁸ even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
²⁰ the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
²¹ And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” Acts 2:16-21 ESV

The Glaring Truth Not a Single One of Us Can Deny https://t.co/ayWqt5csPV #coronavirusandthechurch #COVID19 #Jesus

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) March 26, 2020