I’ve been seeing lots of internet articles, Facebook
posts and comments about God’s creation of the COVID19 Pandemic. Some call this a Biblical plague. Indeed, there are 68 Bible verses pertaining
to plagues and pandemonium. They range
from frogs to floods to earthquakes. I
don’t need a pandemic to get a message from God, though. I hear from God on a regular basis.
I was interviewing a lady ten years ago for a story
related to a tourism attraction, and as I got acquainted with her, she told me
she was an intercessor. I was a
bit puzzled, and I guess my facial expression reflected that because she
explained what she meant. She was
talking about the Spirit of God. She
opened herself up to God’s messages and as a result, God told her things
through dreams and visions. She began to
tell me of some of the instances where this had happened to her. The most intriguing was that she had a dream
about 9/11. She dreamed that two big
buildings in New York City were on fire and that airplanes were on fire in
several places. She had never been to
New York City, and she had never flown in an airplane. This dream had startled
her to the point that she called the FBI headquarters and reported what she had
seen. Two days later, her dreams came
true. I wrote my story and planned to go
back to visit her to inquire more about her Spiritual gift. She died before I had the chance to do that.
God doesn’t speak to me in this way. I believe what my new friend told me, but I
don’t have visions or dreams about upcoming events, although sometimes my ‘gut
feeling’ guides me! What I do experience on a regular basis is the notion that
God’s hand is involved in something I experience. As I’ve gotten older and
wiser, making decisions about things big and small is often done pondering good
and bad. I think those are ways that God
talks to me! I don’t think it takes a
pandemic for Christians to hear from God.
There are 39 verses in the Bible about listening to
God every day. I was raised to believe
that God’s hand is in everything. When the
devil is stirring up trouble, God’s hand is still there to calm the storm. My dad believed that ‘everything was carved
in stone from the beginning of time’ and I never saw him demonstrate that more
than when his first-born child … his namesake … died way before his time. My parents accepted that cruelty with
calm. I admired their ability to do
that. It was their faith that carried
them through.
Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes from hearing …
hearing through the word of Christ.
Proverbs 3: 6 – 16 tells us that we should acknowledge
God and let Him lead us. It clearly
states that if we look for wisdom, we will find understanding. This passage says that we should accept God’s
corrections because He leads those He loves.
I guess the question right now is … is God
correcting us through this time of COVID19? I think the answer is a great big ‘yes’, but I
think the issues aren’t just about ridding evil in the world. Yes, we need to get back to everything that
is good about taking care of our families.
We need to get back to basics … to our roots … and practice the things
that bring about good. If that means
returning to church and religion … then do it.
If that means caring less about material things and more about doing for
other people … then do it. I think it
means more than that.
At some point … or at many points … in recent history the
United States has become too global. I
don’t know what politicians or political party decided it was ok to stop making
products in our own country, providing jobs for American people … but they
weren’t listening to God. When would God
have told us to destroy our economy by ignoring ‘made in the USA’ or ‘buy local’? When would God have told us to eliminate jobs
for American families … so there was less food on the table and fewer people
living even a minuscule part of the American dream?
God didn’t lead us to do those things. God wants us to have common sense and to be
smart. The common folk in this country
could have predicted … and many probably did predict … what we are experiencing
now.
We can’t take care of our own, because we have grown
too dependent upon products coming from other countries, specifically
China. We have sent American jobs to many other countries, leaving behind a workforce unable to make a living wage. When you call a U.S. owned insurance company, you talk to people manning phones in the Philippines. A customer service agent for a product we think is made in the U.S. is actually sitting in a cubical in India. Are our cars still being made in Mexico? Where did your television or your washing machine actually come from?
It is time for all these things to stop. It is time to bring it all back home. This might be the real message from God.
