Coronavirus and our Capacity for God - Diptych part
1.
The coronavirus has taken the world hostage. A sovereign God has disrupted literally every person’s normal routine on Earth. If you are like me, this gets your attention. I’ve been praying and thinking a lot more about things that the noise of life tends to hush. The business I own has me in several grocery stores around Richmond on a daily basis. I have seen much hoarding. I have heard angry voices lifted up. I have seen empty shelves and many faces full of fear and worry. I’ve even seen third party security guards hired and posted to oversee the toilet paper supply in an effort to maintain civility. It has been disturbing to see these behaviors in stores on a micro level while internally processing and praying about things on a macro level. I wrestled while the world seemed to descend into fear. Of course I also experienced waves of feeling what everyone else was feeling: an anxiousness about the future, loved ones’ health, supply chains, the global economy, and my ability to provide for my family. It is always difficult to come to terms with God’s sovereignty in times of suffering however, our opportunities to trust the God of the Bible often come to us as gifts wrapped in pain.
As I spent more time in prayer and meditation, I reminded myself that God is love. However, his love takes many forms. In Genesis chapter eleven, God’s love disrupted the peoples’ building of the Tower of Babel. God’s kindness did this so that they would not become deeply entrenched in a false perception of self sufficiency and greatness. God opposes pride and exalts humility because his ultimate desire is for an eternal relationship with each of us. Somewhere along this line of thought, I found myself meditating on two very different chapters in Exodus: chapter sixteen - “Bread from Heaven,” and chapter thirty two - “The Golden Calf.” For two weeks now I’ve studied them and completed two drawings of these events as a meditation. I believe one of the things the Lord is accomplishing through this pandemic is the expansion of our capacity for himself.
Daily Bread and Hoarding - Exodus 16
The people of Israel were traveling in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. The Lord sent quail for meat every evening and bread every morning. When the dew of the desert floor evaporated, there was a thin layer of fine bread like frost on the ground. There was always enough to feed everyone. The Lord’s singular instruction was that they only gather enough for one day, then double it once a week for the Sabbath rest. The idea of daily bread is also mentioned in the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 as Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Interestingly, the people disobeyed this instruction right away and hoarded some. The bread that was hoarded bred worms and stank.
We are the very same people. God wants to keep his people on a diet of daily bread because in his wisdom he knows that keeping us dependent is what is best for us. It keeps us in a tighter relationship with him. This is largely how he grows our capacity for himself. We hate this dependence and rebel against it much. We quickly begin to trust the resource over its provider. We want to stockpile. We want to feel in control and at ease in what we have instead of who we have. It is in us to want something visible and tangible rather than an invisible God who metes daily portions. It is difficult and counter-cultural to maintain the right perspective. Our path to freedom is dependence. May our capacity for God’s love expand. Until we feast at heaven’s great banquet, may we abide with the giver of daily bread by remembering that it’s not what we have but who we have.
Coronavirus and our Capacity for God - Diptych part
2.
Apis and the Plague - Exodus 32
Very soon after Moses left the people of Israel to meet with God on Mount Sinai, the people went to Aaron and made a god for themselves, the golden calf. Moses was their visible leader and in his absence the people wanted a visible god. Israel worshiped the golden calf and sacrificed to it. As I researched the chapter, I found that the calf was fashioned after the Egyptian god Apis. Apis was seen as a powerful intermediary between humans and more powerful deities. Apis was believed to bring fertility, riches, and abundance. The Egyptians also referred to their kings as “strong bulls” and treated them as gods. This is why Apis is depicted as a striding bull with a solar disc and Uraeus (the sacred serpent which symbolized the king’s power) between its horns.
The people of Israel had seen the God of Abraham part the Red Sea, deliver them from the Egyptian army, and miraculously feed them quail and bread. Still, their desire was to throw off the daily dependence upon an invisible God, even though his glory was visible. They hated dependence and craved a visible god who promised tangible abundance. Israel wanted to hoard again. It is like looking in the mirror. All too often we put our faith in something or someone lesser than God because they are visible and promise to bring us abundance and independence instead of dependence and daily bread. This is the way our capacity for God reduces. Idolatry is the way we invite God’s disruption via pain. His jealous love is to rescue us by turning us away from eternal disaster by sending temporal affliction. The last words of the chapter are from the Lord: “I will visit their sin upon them.” Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made.