What is God Doing During the Coronavirus Pandemic?

A friend asked me yesterday what I thought God was doing through the coronavirus pandemic.

I hesitated to come up with an answer, remembering that God told Isaiah “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways (Isaiah 55:8).  He also rebuked Job’s speculations about the reason for his misfortunes, asking, “who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38.2).

So how could anyone be presumptuous enough to try to explain what God is doing?

On reflection, though, I can venture to say that He is reminding us control freaks how little we really do control.

And perhaps He is reminding us to “be still and know that I am God.”

I understand that there are many who desperately need and want to be able to go to work, and I hope they will soon.  And there are over-stressed doctors and nurses who can barely keep going.

But I am also reminded that the French thinker Pascal famously wrote that the cause of many of the world’s problems is that we do not know how to sit still alone in our room for one hour.

For some of us, could it be that the LORD is whispering, “This is a time to be still.  And to listen for My voice while you wait?”

-Leighton Ford, March 2020