A Moment With Pastor Fred
In 1948 C.S. Lewis wrote of a new threat.
“How are we to live in an atomic age? I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the 16th 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, chronic pain, paralysis, air raids, railway accidents or 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 … It is ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death … 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, not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about death. They make break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
No one is advocating we throw caution to the wind in our own day of dangers. As we said at the beginning of this pandemic – wash your hands and trust God. Use wisdom. Take the precautions you deem necessary. And let us live in the grace of the Lord – a fresh grace each day. Not in fear or sinful anxiety. God has this. He is in control.