In April, at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Americans who were already religious were polled with the question: Did coronavirus deepen your religious faith? Most say that it did, but because of the lockdown, there are no church attendance numbers to prove it. However, after 9/11 people packed the church pews! And after a couple of weeks passed, Sunday attendance settled back to milk toast numbers. 

Only time will reveal whether Dr. Anthony Fauci was right to bring on an economic depression with the lockdown or caused one of mankind’s most serious times of mental depressions in modern history. If the latter is true, we should all be turning toward God and not against our neighbor.

The Psalms of the Christian Bible remind us that God’s people struggled with both a sense of their world falling apart and their utter inability to deal with it during the time of King David. This young king of the United Monarchy of Israel and Judah is recorded in Psalm 57:2 to have said, 

Have mercy on me, God. In you I seek shelter.
In the shadow of your wings I seek shelter till harm passes by.

Many who have drawn closer to God during this unusual time have likely sheltered not “in place” or “socially distant” as much as they sheltered in the “shadow of God’s wings.”

Sadly, history also reveals that while disasters often restore us into the saving arms of our Creator, governments don’t let us stay there long enough for true life changing reflection and change. Instead, government seems to step in to provide relief from all physical, emotional and economic pain — often resulting in the loss of personal freedoms played out daily in the news. 

Taking God out of the economic component of our life is a fool’s errand. As you know, for this reason the Stewardship Foundation adheres to certain core beliefs that help to drive us toward a positive, life-affirming change in the world.

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages
teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness. [Matthew 9:35]