Dipo Olowookere
By Nneka Okumazie
In a world of incredible scientific capability, massive military power and economic might, the coronavirus has shown how unknowns, fears and uncertainty outstrip the confidence of nations.
The scientific confusion of COVID-19, changing information, diverging prognosis, relapses, mutations, symptom emergence, etc. show deficiency in what should be known by the smartest people on the planet, expert in their own practice of decades.
Busy places and cities like China, Italy, South Korea and others have gone ghost due to coronavirus. Caution has heightened in usual routines. Cancellation of events continues. Certain cruise ships became a nightmare.
Some contracted the virus over flights and there is hardly any acceptable prediction of disease direction, treatment or vaccine. Some places have challenges over efficacy of tests, and there is mix up of symptoms of other conditions symmetrical to the 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease.
What the world is seeing and reminded of, drives back – in part, to core humanity.
It is easy to forget how vulnerable anyplace is, when all that is seen is stability. It is easy to forget how fickle a trusted system is, until – realistically – tested. It is also easy to forget how there are many situations beyond any level of wealth.
The epidemic is almost like darkness. What has come to some people or places is what they’ve watched from afar in the past, or in history, but never believing the likelihood, adjacent to them.
Hope has become a word on lips and in hearts. People and experts throw the word around. Wishes that coronavirus stops or goes away mount, and some unaffected places – so far – wary that mutations may make it spread have taken to Christianity prayers.
[Isaiah 60:2, For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee.]
For Christians, they already have a methodology to let confidence, courage, or assumption, get replaced by faith.
Sometimes, Christianity can be described as having physical eyes, but closed to walk – momentarily – on a path.
Though it seems odd, but if the eyes are open, and the neck turns to look back, or sideways, there are always things around the eyes cannot see at any moment.
So, combination of these physical capability and limitation is what Christians refused to walk by. They submit to the Creator.
[2 Corinthians 5:7, (For we walk by Faith, not by sight:)]
This is different from the way of others, who trust in the physical [eyes] or the measurable.
Though it is natural to seek safety and find advantage for self or loved ones, no one is in control of their life or those around.
Some of the most caring parents – who would let nothing touch their children – watched helplessly, on their death beds, leaving those children to the world.
Death too, looks at certain other people in their power, pride, evil and wickedness, mocking at their vanity.
It is easy for some people who continue to say – they don’t know, with some questions on the 2019-nCoV and other diseases, to believe that God does not exist, or to use physical evidence to try to discredit the Creator forgetting that God is a spirit, and that Heaven is not telescopic.
Someday, everyone would find out.
[John 1:1, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.]
[Psalm 50:3, Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him.]
