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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