Who is Running the Universe?

King Ahab was used to giving orders, so when someone dared give him an order, he was stunned. Elijah, the prophet, unexpectedly appeared out of nowhere and stood before him. With unquestionable authority, Elijah announced, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word” (1 Kings 17:1-7). Then as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone. Ahab was left asking, “What just happened and who was that?” Though Ahab probably did not know—that was God’s messenger with God’s message!

An ancient king of Israel named Ahab and his queen Jezebel were pretty impressed with themselves and their prosperity. Jezebel, a princess from Sidon, had brought her gods to the kingdom, and she was proud of them. Ahab readily endorsed them and encouraged the people to embrace them. The people bought the idea that one god is as good as another god (multiculturalism).

God directed the prophet to a remote ravine where he would have water to drink. He also sent ravens to him with bread and meat morning and evening (probably from Ahab’s table). What was behind Elijah’s bold actions? God was asking Ahab and the nation an important question, “Who is running this planet?” The people of Israel had always believed God sustained the universe, but lately, they had begun to doubt that. The introduction of new gods had appealed to them, so they had divided their alliance to God and compromised their faith.

Every people has to answer this question sooner or later. Over the last several decades, the media, actors, academics, scientists, politicians, and even religious leaders insist that God is not running the universe. For many, science, culture, sports, political ideology, and the religion of self, have become their gods. Their explanations and worldview deny the existence of the God of the Bible. They see Christians who believe in one God as utterly ridiculous, and the idea of biblical moral absolutes as laughable! They emphatically declare, “Our world does not depend on him, but on ourselves,” but like Ahab, sometimes, we have to be snapped back to reality.

Every once in a while, God inserts his power into our world in such a way as to disrupt our daily lives. Our usual routine and level of comfort abruptly vanish, and we wonder what happened. God uses these times to remind us that everything and everyone depends on him, whether we believe it or not. God can, in an instant, remove our protection, allowing our comforts to be stripped away so we can realize how weak and vulnerable we are without him. Just like it was for Ahab and Jezebel, things can go from bad to worse very quickly. What should be our response in times like these? Times when a virus of pandemic proportions is visiting our globe? When we as a planet have been paralyzed by the disease and the fear of the disease and economic disaster, what should we do? Solomon pointed us in this direction:

1 Kings 8:35-36 “When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you, and when they pray toward this place and confess your name and turn from their sin because you have afflicted them, 36 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel. Teach them the right way to live, and send rain on the land you gave your people for an inheritance. 

 2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

A Pastor Speaks to His Congregation

Week after week and month after month, we meet together to worship and study God’s Word. We talk about how we will respond when there is a crisis—well, we have one of gigantic proportions. So let’s act as mature believers should with faith in God and calm demeanor. No panic, no, irrational talk or mob mentality, no hoarding, just deliberate action.

We have seen how quickly our world can fall apart “Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird…” (Hosea 9:11). The prophet Haggai described our condition: “You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (Haggai 1:6).

Our only hope is in God now and forever. This crisis is severe and we all pray it passes. We pray for those whose families have suffered loss and those who are sick. We pray for the end of this virus, but until that comes, may we walk worthy of the Lord every day!

The prophet Elisha was approached by a faithful widow who had supported his ministry but now was in dire straits. Creditors were coming to take her two sons as payment. Elisha asked her what she had, and she replied, “Your servant has nothing there at all except a little oil.” She was a woman who was in the middle of a crisis, and she was overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. She wanted Elisha to make it all go away. The prophet gave her an assignment, “Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.” Think about what Elisha asked of her. It would have sounded irrational to anyone without faith in God. The woman did as she was told, and the result was a miracle, “They brought the jars to her, and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another one.” But he replied, “There is not a jar left.” Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left” (2 Kings 4:1-7)

In a crisis, it is hard to see God because the problem looms so immense. There was something about the disaster that caused the woman to minimize her gifts. God’s gifts are not measured by big and little, great or small. Her comment, “I have nothing except a little oil” is so descriptive of our mentality. God’s solution not only supplied the need but also taught the woman not to despise what she had. As we go through this crisis of the pandemic of the Corona Virus facing our nation and the world, let us have faith to believe that nothing is impossible for God. The one essential question for all of us is, “Will I trust God with each crisis or not?” We don’t know how long this will last or how it will all turn out, but we do know that God will not abandon us.

Standing Firm in the Face of Panic

We are living through a severe pandemic, the COVID-19. I think most of us have all been following the guidelines that have been issued by government officials. What has caught my attention even more than the Corona Virus is the panic that seems to be spilling forth from the media every day. It is evident from our grocery stores that panic causes hoarding. People, out of fear, buy five times the amount of things they actually need, thus costing shortages for the rest. This panic seems to be more contagious than the virus.

As Christians, we need to affirm our faith in the Lord, his word, and our ultimate destination, heaven. If we do, that panic will have no place in our lives. On the contrary, we will have a peace that testifies to the presence of God in our minds and hearts. I love the writings of C. S. Lewis; though some of them are a little difficult for me, I have found some of the most profound things in his writing. Here is an example of that insight when he addressed the world-wide panic about the atomic bomb 72 years ago:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: "Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents."

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— "On Living in an Atomic Age" (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays