From the Desk of Pastor Doug Lucy
April 3, 2020
Like most of you, I find myself being immersed in all things Covid-19. Everywhere you look and/or listen you are being given all the information that you could possibly want on the virus, the illness it brings and the American response to the to it all. On March 17, I heard President Trump refer to the virus as “The Invisible Enemy”. He talked about this invisible enemy and the incredible damage that it caused. He spoke with a certain amount of fear of the damage that this invisible enemy could bring. The doctors in the room described just how this tiny little virus went about the business of doing what it does. From the moment it enters your system through the mucus membranes, to some 14 days later, when it begins to produce symptoms, to doing damage in the lungs of some people that force them into hospitals and onto respirators and spoke of the fact that in a certain, pretty low percentage of patients, death occurs. While the president spoke of damage that occurred once a person became infected with this microscopic (unseen) enemy, I couldn’t help but think I’d heard something incredibly similar before.
God told Adam and Eve they were welcome to have anything they wanted from the Garden of Eden except what grew on one certain tree. You can have anything but…As Eve approached the tree one day, she was met there by the serpent. He convinced her that there wasn’t really anything bad that would come from eating the forbidden fruit. Genesis 3 says, 5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”Eat it, what could go wrong, “you would only know what God knows.” What the serpent failed to say was, it was going to usher in the day of an invisible enemy. That invisible enemy was sin. When I think about that, I can’t help but think of the devastation that sin has brought into our world. Until the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was eaten, everything was PERFECT. Looking around at the world after the passage of time, is it still perfect? Hardly! Sin has devastated the world. Wars have been fought, murders have been committed, addiction battles have been waged, families have fallen apart and it’s all because of sin. An invisible enemy. Not only invisible, but the more enlightened we become, the more likely we are to even acknowledge that sin exists. If sin exists, then so do sinners. Just like this virus can be battled and beaten, so can sin. The road to beat Novel Coronavirus seems to be much more difficult than the road to beat sin. As a matter of fact, sin has been defeated already. It was defeated the very moment that Jesus died and on the morning of the 3rd day walked out of tomb a resurrected physical body. The wages of sin? Death. The answer to sin? Jesus. Be aware that we live in a day where sin is loved and embraced. But to avoid death, to live forever and in the presence of the Creator, seek out Jesus. He is the cure for the original unseen enemy.