Sunday 11 February 2018

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. – 2 Corinthians 4:7


Today’s Scripture Reading (February 11, 2018): 2 Corinthians 4

In 1918, the world was at war, and in more ways, than we realized at that moment. Of course, 1918 was the final year of World War I, the War to End All Wars. A peace treaty on November 11, 1918, would end all of the hostilities. But over the four years of the war, the toll on human life was incredible. By the time the final peace was hammered out, over thirty-one million soldiers would be either killed, wounded or missing in action. Add in the eight-million civilians who were killed during the war, and the death toll of the war reaches just short of eighteen-million.

But at the same time, we were involved in a different fight, this one against the Spanish Flu. In 1918, we didn’t realize how great the battle was that we were having against the flu, but by the time 1918 had finished, the Spanish Flu would have claimed the lives of fifty-million people worldwide – almost three times as many as died in the War to End All Wars. The reason we didn’t know how serious the Spanish Flu had become was because that information had been classified because of the War. Even the name of the flu is a symbol of what we didn’t know. The first outbreak of the flu may have been in 1917 in the United States, but because Spain was neutral and not involved in the War in Europe, it was only the seriousness of the flu epidemic in Spain on which the news outlets were allowed to report. The result gave the impression that the flu was much worse in Spain than it was in other parts of the world, something that was completely untrue.

The cause of the Spanish Flu was the H1N1 virus, the same virus that caused the 2009 Flu Pandemic. And what was significant about the Spanish Flu was the effect it had on healthy segments of the populations. Every year, the flu claims some lives, but normally those who die from the flu are the very young and the old, and those who are in a weakened condition before contracting the virus. The Spanish Flu killed many in those population groups but also killed an abnormally high number of people who were otherwise healthy.

The Spanish Flu and world conflicts are reminders of the truth of Paul’s message. We are a treasure bound up in a fragile container. It sometimes doesn’t take much break the container in which we live. We are a people that are only a war or a pandemic away from destruction. The truth is that it doesn’t matter how healthy we might be; we are mortal, and death and destruction are never far from us. We are fallible, and we don’t always know what is happening around us, or understand the way in which the world will go.

But all of that just underscores the strength of the God who has chosen us and has decided to work through us. We can’t do it, but he can. We aren’t strong enough, but he is. We can’t solve the problem of evil in the world, but he has. And his solution was to come down and walk among us in our frail covering, allowing us to kill him so that he could atone for our sin. And because of that act, we have the opportunity to go and greet the day as new creatures, unafraid of the future because we know that God holds the undiscovered country in his hands.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 5

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