Eight (8) Lessons during COVID-19 from a Former Pandemic

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Francis Grimke, pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C. during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, wrote a sermon about the pandemic entitled "Some Reflections Growing Out of the Recent Epidemic of Influenza that Afflicted Our City." The sermon is commendable in its entirety, making some salient points that we would all do well to reflect on. You can read it in full on the 9 Marks website: https://www.9marks.org/article/some-reflections-growing-out-of-the-recent-epidemic-of-influenza-that-afflicted-our-city/
Grimke wonders out loud "what is the meaning of it all?" and then makes eight (8) observations in that regards that might be summarized as follows:
  1. God's Patient Mercy - "How easy it would be for God to wipe out the whole human race."
  2. God's Sovereign Will - "...why of those who took the disease some recovered and others did not...is to be found in the will of God."
  3. God's Inscrutable Will - "...why are some taken with the disease and others are not...I do not know."
  4. God's Providential Provision of Government - "The ground of the exercise of this extraordinary power [prohibiting large public gatherings including church meetings] was found in the imperative duty of the [government] officials to safeguard, as far as possible the health of the community..."
  5. God's Clear Condemnation of Racism - "...how completely [the epidemic] has shattered the theory...that a white skin entitles its possessor to better treatment than one who possesses a dark sin...it is the folly of ... stupid (evil, awful)...prejudice."
  6. God's Exaltation of the Church - "[The epidemic] has brought out in a way that is is very gratifying, the high estimation in which the Christian church is held..."
  7. God's Kind Reminder of Death and Eternity - "...[the pandemic] kept the thought of death and of eternity constantly before the people."
  8. God's Blessing of the Security found in Faith in Christ - "...the blessedness of religion, of the sense of security which a true, living, working faith in the Lord Jesus Christ gives one in the midst of life's perils."

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