Where Is God In All Of This?

You know, I feel like this past week the internet and social media have really come to play the role maybe they were supposed to play all along? Like all the way back to when I got that first AOL disk in the mail.


I see people using online platforms this week to share their gifts. Music gifts. Teaching tools gifts. Writing gifts. Encouragement gifts. Medical insights and medical care gifts. I've seen people rally friends together in online book clubs and prayer groups. I've seen free lunches organized. I've seen people shop for their elderly neighbors. 

All. Online.

This week, at an unprecedented time of being isolated from one another, I've seen the internet live up to a billing that I've always seen as "fake news"  - that the internet brings us together. 

This morning, I had a brief online chat with my old pal PastorChad Herndon. We've been talking about catching up over lunch for a long time, but haven't done it. But this morning, with a cup of coffee in my hand, via social media, he shared words with me that couldn't have struck me more powerfully if we'd been sharing coffee in person. (Even though post-Corona, I will be making sure we get that coffee in person). 
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But Chad said "Pointing to hope is a believer's task."

As one of those believers, I think sometimes that statement can be misunderstood. I think we picture the NFL player making the last second game winning field goal and instinctively pointing to the sky. I guess thinking maybe God somehow needed some attention in that moment. 

In this tough time, though, I don't think God needs us believers POINTING AT HIM, but rather, I think he needs us LEANING ON HIM while we point to one another. I think we all have gifts to share in this unprecedented time that offer one another unprecedented hope. PLEASE keep sharing them. 

I was reading accounts of historical pandemics and plagues this morning. One of the common themes was how people didn't much have each others backs in the old pandemic times. 

In his book “Epidemics and Society,” Frank Snowden argues that pandemics hold up a mirror to society and force us to ask basic questions: What is possible imminent death trying to tell us? Where is God in all this? What’s our responsibility to one another?

I read that and couldn't help but think that last question, "what's our responsibility to one another" - well - that will ultimately answer where is God in all this, won't it? 

I think that's what God wants of us. To respond to one another with love and with hope. I don't think he wants us wasting much time pointing at him when we can be reaching out to one another on his behalf. I trust in doing that, in the quietest of ways that God will hear as a booming collection of voices, we'll be showing where God is in all of this. 

In our quiet way, we will be responding to the task of pointing to hope.