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Are there animals in heaven?
By BILL TINSLEY
My aunt once asked me if there will be animals in heaven. Perhaps it’s a good question to ask during this season when pets have played such an important role in helping us survive COVID-19.
When many of us have had to distance from family, friends, co-workers and classmates, our pets have stepped up. Our pets become part of the family. If they’re that important on Earth, will there be animals in heaven?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the 20th century theologian and martyr, once counseled a 10-year-old boy whose German Shepherd died. The boy was distraught. He asked Bonhoeffer if his dog would be in heaven.
Bonhoeffer said, “I quickly made up my mind and said to him: ‘Look, God created human beings and also animals, and I’m sure he also loves animals. And I believe that with God it is such that all who loved each other on Earth — genuinely loved each other — will remain together with God …”
God’s love for all creatures in his creation is abundantly clear. After he had divided the light from darkness, He filled the Earth with living things: fish, birds, and beasts (in that order). “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:24-25) before man ever walked the Earth.
After sin entered the world, mankind sank deeper into selfishness, deceit, violence, murder and rebellion. When God’s judgment could be postponed no longer, he sent a catastrophic flood. But God showed his love for man and beast by providing a means of escape through Noah’s ark.
God instructed Noah, “You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” (Genesis 6:19-21).
Looking forward to the day when the Messiah’s Kingdom would replace our world, Isaiah wrote: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. … They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9).
If God so loved us that he blessed us with the companionship and service of animals on Earth, would he withhold his love from us in heaven by depriving us of these creatures who shared our mortal joys and sorrows?
Fhttps://www.galvnews.com/faith/free/article_ad80d102-f948-503f-88f8-31f1a8fe7da6.htmlor the rest of the post…
As America and other parts of the world have begun to open again for in-person services, many churches and organizations keep falling into a trap we first identified a year ago.
The mistake? It’s far too easy to step back into the past the moment you step back into your church building.
The biggest mistake most leaders made comes from the emotional rush to get back into a facility, see everyone again, and assemble their teams and get back to ‘normal’. Trust me, I miss it. With COVID surging again in Canada, we haven’t had in-building services for over a year.
That said, it’s just too easy to embrace a model of ministry designed to reach a world that no longer exists.
As many church leaders who have reopened for in-person gatherings have discovered, getting back to 2019 attendance has proved challenging.
That’s because crisis is an accelerator and many of the trends that were already at play before the pandemic were sped up. Chief among them: the rise of post-Christian culture and decentralization. (Here are 8 trends to keep watching in 2021.)
As hard as the last year has been, you’ve learned so much in this disruption that to simply re-embrace what was will destroy what can be.
So what’s the danger as you gear up for full, post-pandemic services in your facility?
Simple.
Thinking that when you walk back into your building things will be just fine. In other words, you don’t really need to change anymore.
Which is the fastest path to irrelevance.
Things have changed. Radically.
The world has changed. Radically.
Getting back to where you were doesn’t actually move you forward.
By way of reminder, here are 5 things that you’ll miss if you step back into the past when you step back into your building.
1. Your Innovation Curve Will Come To An Abrupt Stop
The coronavirus disruption forced you to change.
I realize that kind of change and the damage the virus has caused has been deeply painful. It has been for every leader in 100 different ways.
But the crisis has shown us that while some churches struggled deeply, others started thriving. In fact, the disruption has shown us three basic leadership approaches: frozen leaders, hesitant leaders, and agile leaders. (See which one best describes you here).
Crisis is also the cradle for innovation.
Most leaders pivoted. Most set up online services, got a Zoom account, figured out how to live stream on YouTube, started shooting more personal videos and got way more active online.
And many leaders saw their online engagement soar, sputter and then settle in.
You figured it out.
But walking back into your building can kill your innovation curve if you let it.
It will feel great to see some people again, and to get back on the familiar platform, and see the team, and connect.
And before you know it, you’ll stop innovating. Especially in your online ministry and in distributed gatherings.
Look…I get it. Change is hard. I’m tired too. But don’t waste this moment. Don’t waste the progress you’ve started.
Don’t let a sudden lack of creativity around methods limit your mission.
Crisis is a cradle for innovation. And the future belongs to the innovators.
2. You’ll Stop Pivoting
Closely related to innovation is pivoting.
Almost everyone pivoted since the crisis, and those who didn’t have already disappeared or are on their way out.
But pivoting is probably here to stay for a while (see point 4). If you study the history of change and progress, you quickly realize the future almost always belongs to agile leaders who adapt and change.
Stop for a moment and write down everything good that’s come out of the pivoting you’ve done since the disruption started.
Now think through how many of that traction never would have happened had you not pivoted.
The moment you walk back into the past and into comfort, you lose all that.
So if that’s all the growing you want to do for a while, stop pivoting.
If you want to keep pivoting, here’s how to do it quickly and well to move your mission forward.
3. You’ll See Online As An Add-On, Not The Future
As you settle into old patterns, all your energy will go back into in-person ministry.
And don’t get me wrong, a lot of energy, passion, prayer, and effort belong in in-person ministry. The gathered church is here to stay.
Eventually, you’ll look up and realize you haven’t posted much to Instagram or Facebook recently, and that your team is so busy they haven’t really followed up on comments online or checked out who’s new.
Online church will become an add-on again, something you tag onto the most tech-savvy person’s job description hoping he or she will get to if they have the time (which they seldom do).
And you’ll completely miss the future.
And in the same way remote work will become the new normal for many people in the wider economy, online church might become a default option for many people.
By Russell Moore -March 4, 2021
After half a million of our fellow Americans have died to the COVID-19 pandemic, the country seems almost right on the verge of hope. Vaccines were developed with record-setting speed, and have proven both safe and effective. After the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been on the field now for a while, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just authorized a third—by pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. This vaccine has made news—both in terms of the images of trucks headed for parcel distribution hubs for delivery and, less noticed, a denunciation from the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, later joined by the Catholic bishops nationwide, arguing that Catholics, when possible, should take one of the first two vaccines but not the Johnson & Johnson version because, they argue, it is linked to cloned stem cells derived from abortions that took place decades ago.
The bishops’ recommendation was not quite as fiery as many headlines reported. They did not argue that taking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was morally sinful or that no one should take it, just that Catholics should choose the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines over Johnson & Johnson, when such a choice is possible. The Vatican has already announced that COVID-19 vaccines are not only morally acceptable but to be commended in the fight against this dread disease.
Some have wondered, seeing these headlines, whether taking a COVID-19 vaccine would cause them to be involved, somehow, in abortion or embryonic stem-cell research or in any way the taking of a human life.
Asking the Right Questions
The intuitions behind this question are good and sound. The question assumes a foundational biblical truth that is often pushed aside in these times: namely, that a Christian may not do evil that good may come out of it (Rom. 12:21). In a day when “lesser of two evils” ethics and “whataboutism” have upended Christian witness, with Christians affirming much that they previously denied in order to justify remaining loyal to their temporal tribes, we should be thankful, at least, when the right questions are asked.
The issue is the use of cell lines, which were originally derived from abortions, in either the development stage (Moderna and Pfizer) or production stage (Johnson & Johnson) of the vaccines. It is important to note that although the cell lines potentially originated from abortions, no cells remain from the original fetal tissue in these cloned cells, and the cell lines no longer contain fetal tissue or body parts.
We should always work to prevent authorization or funding of embryonic research derived from abortions—both because of reverence for the body and because such research incentivizes further attempts to see vulnerable human life as a means to an end. That’s why I’ve worked with coalitions of Roman Catholics and others to do away with such research and, in more recent days, in petitioning the FDA to ensure ethical means of vaccine production. This kind of advocacy has led to several positive developments, such as an unethically-produced polio vaccine being replaced by those without such concerns and the National Institutes of Health approving a new study that will develop ethical cell lines for future use to avoid these ethical conflicts.
The Ethics of the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine
Still, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is already developed. Does taking it involve moral cooperation with abortion?
Most people asking me this question aren’t asking me if they should violate their conscientious objection to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. To them, I would turn to Romans 14:23 and say, with the bishops, seek out one of the other vaccines. But most people asking me this question don’t have conscience objections to taking the Johnson & Johnson, but wonder if they should have such objections. Short answer: no.
Opposing unethical means of research does not mean that people must shun medical treatments that are discovered through these means.
A Few Analogies
Consider a few analogies. Catholic philosopher Christopher Tollefsen, making the case for the ethical rightness of taking the vaccine, argues, rightly, that discerning such questions requires asking whether one—in doing any act—is participating in or cooperating with evil. If we are cooperating in an evil, we cannot do the act—no matter the “greater good.” He argues, though, that, even if a vaccine were to come about through some illicit means, one taking the vaccine is not thereby endorsing or empowering those illicit means.
Five Ways the Post-Place Church Will Look Different after COVID
The concept of “place” has changed dramatically during COVID.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say the COVID accelerated the trends that were already underway. “Place” is different.
Think about it. For centuries, the home has been a place for family and retreat. Now it has become our theater with streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, Disney +, and many more. Home has become our stadium and athletic arena. We have become accustomed to viewing sporting events rather than attending them. And for some, home has become our fitness center, since we elected to buy a Peleton bike rather than keep our gym membership. And, of course, the home has become an office for millions.
Think about offices. They were the daytime domain of employees. Many of those employees are now at home, in coffee shops, and in workshare places.
Think about theaters. COVID closed many. Some are barely hanging on. The viewing place of tens of millions has moved home.
We are in a post-place world. “Place” has been redefined and reimagined.
So, what are the implications for churches? Is the world of in-person services going away? Are small groups becoming small Zoom groups?
Though we can’t know with certainty, we can see some profound implications for the place called church. Here are five of them:
- The church will become a destination place for many for gathering. Call it a contrarian view, but I am seeing more signs of this reality. While digital worship will still be very important, there is a pent-up desire by many for some type of regular healthy gathering. Churches can satisfy this desire, but there is a presumption that the church is healthy. Unhealthy churches will decline faster. Healthy churches will grow faster. Most churches, at least initially, will have fewer people gathering. Those on the periphery, such as the cultural Christians, will not return. The median decline of churches once in the post-pandemic phase will be around 20 percent.
- Because the home will be prominent in the post-place world, neighborhood churches will become more important. Home is the entertainment center, the physical workout place, the office, and the athletic arena or stadium. Home will be at the center of places. Those who live in the homes will look to local venues of close proximity. The neighborhood church has the opportunity to be a big factor in the post-place world.
- Churches have the opportunity to be a post-place option for those in their community. Most churches have an abundance of space. Really, most churches have too much space. The churches that are creative in the post-place world will find Great Commission ways to reach their communities by making their facilities available to them.
- Fewer small groups will meet in church facilities in the post-place world. This trend has been exacerbated by COVID. For a long season, many churches built large educational facilities for their on-campus groups. It was not a bad thing. We saw much better assimilation metrics with on-campus groups versus off-campus groups. But the existing trend to move groups to homes, coffee shops, and other non-church places has accelerated during COVID.
How will Christians do “Life Together” after the pandemic?
A year with challenges unlike any other year before.
By Carmen Joy Imes
I think it’s safe to say that when 2020 is over, the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief. (Well, those who survive it will, which is clearly not enough of us.) Just when we think we’re nearing the end of one crisis, another begins. We’re only halfway through the year, but it’s been brutal. Absolutely brutal.
Several memes on Facebook have illustrated the general sentiment:
2020: The Movie
Written by Steven King
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
or
Where can I get a refund for 2020? I’m not satisfied.
Others have given 2020 a 1-star rating, saying they wouldn’t recommend it.
But as hard as it has been, I’m beginning to think this was exactly what we needed. I don’t mean that in a masochistic way. I don’t enjoy suffering. I also don’t think God planned the CoronaVirus or the Australian bush fires or the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery as a way of testing us. But God has gifts to give us that can only come wrapped in suffering. Chief among them this year is the gift of sight.
As we turned the corner into 2020, I braced myself for the inevitable rush of clever plays on 2020: 20/20 vision, seeing clearly, hindsight, etc. I’ve noticed surprisingly few. But now that we’re nearly halfway through the year, it’s time.
2020 is revealing things about ourselves and our society that we needed to see.
We are connected. Now more than ever, we can see that our entire world is interlaced. Beating the CoronaVirus has required the cooperation of every country on the planet. Planes, trains, and automobiles knit us so tightly together that we cannot face our greatest challenges without a coordinated effort. With borders closed, events cancelled, and gatherings prohibited, we’re feeling acutely how much connecting we actually do.
We need to be together. The wonders of technology have not erased our need for handshakes, hugs, and proximity to each other. We are embodied. We are designed to relate to each other as three-dimensional beings who share the same airspace and the same vibes. Singing along to pre-recorded worship doesn’t cut it. Zoom doesn’t cut it. Relating only on screen further polarizes us because we have fewer social cues by which we can “read the room” and build bridges of understanding. It seems we have less wiggle room for disagreement online than we do in person.
We are divided. We talk past each other more than we talk to each other. Social media becomes either an echo chamber in which we “like” those who sound like us or a boxing ring where we duke it out and nobody wins. Constructive dialogue seems rare. Given that this is an election year in the United States, our divisions are likely to feel even more acute in a few months. When a politician speaks, members of the opposing party tend to hear something quite different from what members of the politician’s own party hear. Both sides respond with “See?!” as if the statement proves their point and vindicates their views. For the nation to survive this season, we’ll need new ways to get at the underlying values that drive public rhetoric.
We do not all experience the same world. The pandemic disproportionately affects communities that lack infrastructure, such as the Navajo Nation. Stay at home orders cause undue hardship for some and feel like a staycation to others. Some of us have jobs that can be done from home. Others have lost jobs or lost wages. Some of us have safe homes. Some of us are in more danger at home than out in the world. Some of us see the police force as our allies and others of us experience repeated profiling and lack confidence that law enforcement will act lawfully.
Most of our work is not as “essential” as we thought. Many of us have discovered that without our work, the world will keep on turning. Some of us who thought that slowing down was impossible have been forced to do so. Perhaps we will begin to take ourselves less seriously. We’ve also gained a new appreciation for essential workers in our communities: grocery store checkers and truck drivers, nurses and mechanics, garbage collectors and cleaning crews. Hopefully this new appreciation will translate into increased respect.
Some things are more important and more urgent than we realized. Just a few short weeks ago the angst of our nation spilled into the streets to confront long-standing inequities felt keenly by the black community. More than ever before in my memory, white pastors and white-led organizations have spoken up and showed up to march alongside our black and brown brothers and sisters. My Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds are dominated by conversations about race. I expect they will be for some time. Organizations of all kinds are issuing statements and discussing the way forward. These conversations are not easy. The potential for misunderstanding is high. People of color among us are understandably skeptical of white hashtag activism, wondering whether it will translate into any lasting change.
You’ve likely heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor executed by the Nazi regime for his plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He penned some incredibly profound insights on Christian community in his book, Life Together. They have never been more relevant. He warns:
It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed.
Until now, I had never been prevented from gathering with other believers. 2020 has shown me what a gift it is to meet together, and what a loss it is when such meetings are not allowed.
But there’s more. Bonhoeffer spent formative time in the black church in the United States before returning to Germany to shepherd the church that actively resisted Hitler’s regime. Bonhoeffer knows community. He knows a church divided by politics and a world on fire. He engaged in civil disobedience. And he knows what it costs.
Stanglin: ‘Opened from the outside’
The great German theologian and preacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo on April 5, 1943, charged with denouncing Hitler and the Nazis, for repudiating the German Christians and German churches who were supporting Hitler, for running an illegal underground seminary at Finkenwalde, and for preaching, teaching, and writing for the Confessing Church movement.
Bonhoeffer was taken to Berlin and placed in a military cell at Tegel Prison. Seven-and-a-half months later, on Nov. 21, 1943, still in custody, Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to his dear friend, Eberharde Bethge.
“Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent – one waits and hopes and potters about, but in the end what we do is of little consequence; for the door is shut, and it can only be opened from the outside
If we ever needed a year-long reminder that we are stuck and we have no way to free ourselves, 2020 has been that awful reminder. We are imprisoned in a broken world and we have no control. In the face of a global pandemic, our best science and technology and laws have been slow at best, maybe even disastrous. In the midst of racial unrest and disparity and injustice, our best intentions and politicians have failed. The economic crisis, the ongoing wars, the political instability, the increased division and mistrust – we have no solution. Our very best efforts seem to cause more problems than they solve.
Reflecting on the long-term impact of the Bubonic Plague (1346-1353) sweeping across Europe and ravaging his native Florence, the poet Petrarch wrote: “O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.”
In a 2005 History Today essay, “The Black Death: the Greatest Catastrophe Ever,” Olé J. Benedictow estimated that “the Black Death killed 50 million people in the 14th century, or 60 percent of Europe’s entire population.”
Bill Leonard
He cites one chronicler who observed: “All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried … . At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up and thrown into the pit.”
Some 700 years later, a November 2020 story in The Guardian offers a hauntingly parallel report from El Paso, the Texas epicenter of the coronavirus, and confirms more than 800 deaths since March, with 400 more currently being investigated. Recently, city leaders increased the use of mobile morgues from six to 10, acknowledging that hospitals and their medical staffs are “overwhelmed.”
The paper references a near hour-long Facebook posting in which Lawanna Rivers, a visiting nurse, emotionally describes the situation: “The only way that those patients was coming out of that pit was in a body bag,” referring to the COVID unit where she was working. She concluded: “I am not OK from an emotional mental standpoint.”
As 2020 draws to a close, the number of COVID cases stands at 60 million globally, with more than 1.5 million deaths. The United States reports more than 12 million cases, with more than 263,000 COVID-related deaths, the largest numbers for any country worldwide. William Barber, director of the Poor People’s Campaign, recently observed that while the U.S. has only 4% of the world’s population, it claims 20% of COVID-related deaths.
Such overwhelmingly high statistics can numb our collective psyche, unless we’ve had the virus ourselves, or lost friends and family because of it. Yet we are not numb to the reality of lost jobs, closed schools, online worship, unceasing political antagonism, rising hate crimes and daily inconveniences.
While the news of approaching vaccines is promising, we are not strangers to the plaintive words of Jeremiah 8:20, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Coronavirus exhaustion permeates the globe.
That reality came home to me in a recent pastoral prayer offered during Sunday worship by Glenn Pettiford, assistant pastor at First Baptist Church, Highland Avenue, our home congregation for 23 years in Winston-Salem. The service was “virtual,” yet Pettiford’s prayer was anything but. It reached across our collective hearts into the marrow of our bones.
Like a voice in the postmodern wilderness he cried out: “Lord, some of us have lost our minds. Some of us don’t believe we need to wear a mask. Some of us don’t believe we need to social distance. Some people have more faith in their handguns than they do in their own health practices. … Lord, I’m not mad at my brothers and sisters, I’m just tired of this mess. (Some people are) complaining about children not being able to go back to school, but at the same time being more concerned about going to a football game or a bar than making it safe for the young ones. Save us all, if you will, I ask in Jesus’ name. Please Lord, your children are dying. Lord, we’re not giving up; we can’t give up, you’ve been so good to us. We can’t give up. We’ve got to keep going.”
In those moments, the pastor’s prayer became for me an imprecatory psalm, a lamentation bursting with passion and compassion, demanding, “How long, O Lord, how long,” while imploring, “O Lord, do not turn your face from us!”
For me, it seemed another Bonhoeffer moment, a challenge poured out in real time and reflecting two crucial elements of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought: a stark choice between cheap and costly grace amid a determined “will for the future.”
In his classic 1937 work, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer denounced cheap grace as “grace without price; grace without cost!” This mistaken spirituality incorrectly insists that “the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.” It means “grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares.” (A cheapjack is “a peddler of inferior goods.”)
Costly grace, by contrast, “is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a (person) must knock.”
“Such grace,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.” In German, the title of this seminal volume is simply Nachfolge, “following.”
Costly grace and the moral catastrophes of his times put Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the test, resulting in his execution at the hands of the Nazis in 1945, a grace from which he never retreated, and by which he kept going, ever with an eye to the future.
DECEMBER 11, 2020 | CHRISTOPHER ASH
Our newsfeeds are full of encouraging results in trials of potential vaccines for COVID-19. I need to start this countercultural article by saying I really hope we get an effective vaccine. I hope we get it soon. I hope it can be rolled out, not only in my own country, but all over the world.
The upsides are clear and rich. Most obviously, it will save lives. Life is a good thing; saving lives is a desirable aim. It may also offer some relief for the many enduring mental-health problems due to lockdowns and COVID restrictions, a way of escape for those suffering the hidden miseries of domestic abuse, the chance of restored education for millions of schoolchildren and college students, and a better prospect of jobs for so many whose work hopes have been blighted. How we long for these miseries to be alleviated. I feel especially for the young people who are paying—and probably will continue to pay—so much of the cost of all this suffering.
It will be such a joy to again be able to meet freely with brothers and sisters in Christ, to sing God’s praises together, and to do all the “one another” things the New Testament encourages. Such a joy. A secular society cannot begin to understand the depth of the grief that our current restrictions cause to our souls. If a vaccine enables all this to restart: hallelujah!
And then there is the ability to see precious family, to spend time with friends, to restart hospitality in our homes. So of course we all long for a successful vaccine, and soon.
As I’ve meditated about this, it seems that the Bible warns of three dangers that might accompany a successful vaccine—and therefore three spiritual warnings. These, I suspect, are not so obvious. They’re certainly not in our newsfeeds.
1. We may not let God’s kindness lead us to repentance.
A pandemic is, I take it, yet another warning from God that there is a judgment to come, that we live in a world by which the pure, holy, and righteous God is rightly angered. That doesn’t mean getting a horrible disease is always personal punishment for a particular sin; Jesus firmly corrected those who thought it was (e.g., John 9:1–3). But it is a warning to all of us that, unless we repent, we too will perish (Luke 13:1–4). The terrible refrain in the book of Revelation (e.g., Rev. 16:9, 11) of people suffering anticipations of final judgment but not repenting ought to warn us to repent. That God does not immediately punish all our sins is a kindness that ought to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). A pandemic is, to use C. S. Lewis’s memorable phrase, a “severe mercy,” because it warns us of worse to come and therefore of the urgent need to turn to God.
Writing of a disaster in Sicily in the 18th century, the Christian poet William Cowper reflected:
God may choose his mark,
May punish, if he please, the less, to warn
The more malignant. If he spared not them,
Tremble and be amazed at thine escape,
Far guiltier England, lest he spare not thee!
In my country, I see little sign of a society moved by COVID-19 to a penitent fear of God. I see little sign of it in the churches. And, worst of all, I find little of this in my own self-righteous, complacent heart. As I write this, I say to myself: Christopher, you need daily to repent of your sins and flee afresh to Christ for mercy. My first reaction, all too often—and I say this to my shame—is to grumble, to criticize governments, to wallow in self-pity. May God have mercy and move me, and move our churches, and move our nations, to a deep and widespread repentance.
2. It may feed our pride so that we neglect to thank God.
How extraordinarily clever are the scientists in the pharmaceutical industry! The skill, ingenuity, hard work, perseverance, and mind-boggling brilliance of those who develop a vaccine is a matter of wonder and amazement. It is an extraordinary thing to watch the whole process as it develops with such speed and—as it seems at the moment—likely success.
‘Suicide Is A Very Real Threat’: Pandemic Depression New, Growing Disorder Linked To COVID-19
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Pandemic depression is a new disorder linked to COVID-19 and it’s growing. Research shows people in major metropolitan areas, like Philadelphia, are being hit harder by mental health challenges.
Students have had their lives turned upside down, mainly with disruptions to schooling. The pandemic is impacting everyone and for many, taking a toll on their mental health.ADVERTISING
It’s not just physical ailments as emergency departments are also being bombarded with the emotional fallout from the pandemic. Over a six-week period this summer in Montgomery County, 400 people went to hospitals because of self-injury or suicidal thoughts.
A new study in Britain shows school lockdowns are having a big impact on children.
“We found quite a substantial increase in ratings of depressive symptoms during lockdown,” said Duncan Astle, a developmental psychologist for the University of Cambridge.
The research tracked about 200 elementary students before and after the lockdown and found a 70% chance that depression increased with isolation.
Ron Shive: Who are we in times of crisis?
Fall is definitely here, and a favorite fall festival is just around the corner — Halloween.
Halloween 2020 will have to look much different than in years past, and for good reason. The Centers for Disease Control has a helpful page on its website (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays.html#halloween) that lists lower, moderate and higher risk activities. One event that we will all miss this year is the traditional trick-or-treating, where treats are handed to children who go door to door, but I do hope all kids still dress up in their costumes and perhaps have a virtual Halloween costume contest.
Some costumes are so creative, and when one sees them the only appropriate response is a broad smile. And others make you ask, “Who are you?”
While that is a fun question to ask when a trick-or-treater is at your front door, asking that about oneself is a vital question periodically to ask ourselves — “Who am I?”
The pastor had scheduled a visit with members of the congregation. When he arrived at their home, he was greeted by their grandson, who looked him up and down and then asked, “Are you the creature?” and then turned to his grandmother and asked, “Grandma, is this the creature?” It appears there had been a conversation about the preacher’s visit before his arrival. Somehow, I think the little boy was disappointed.
Who are you? Who am I? Creature or preacher? Or …
Who am I? What I have discovered is that most often we do not ask this question until a time of crisis of one nature or the other occurs. I have learned that mid-life itself can be the crisis that forces us to ask that question, who am I? For others the crisis that forces the asking of this question may be graduating from high school, the loss of a job, the death of a dream, the end of a marriage, the death of a parent or retirement itself. Who am I?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who was arrested and imprisoned for two years for his part in the Officers’ Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He eventually died on the Nazi gallows in April 1945. From prison on July 9, 1944, he wrote to Eberhard Bethge, a very good friend of his, and it is a haunting poem that asks this crisis-induced question.
Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
Restless and longing and sick,
like a bird in a cage …?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? …
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Who am I? It is the question that Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked in the midst of his prison-induced crisis.
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