In these challenging times we need to do all we can to encourage each other, and to bring hope.
So while it may seem a contradiction, I would like to propose that disease is bringing healing.
Yes, this is about how the coronavirus, while it is an international crisis, also may be producing positive unintended consequences.
Here in the UK our national conversation for the past three years has been dominated by our views on Brexit. Sadly, but perhaps inevitably because of strong opposing views, our nation became divided. Disappointment, disillusionment, disagreement set in for some. But we must remember that no family, community, team or nation thrives in such circumstances. We do best when we pull together.
And then for 2020 came a deadly disease. Perhaps the international community should have heeded Bill Gates’ warn
ing in 2015 after the Ebola outbreak; he urged national governments to prepare for a pandemic. But we didn’t, choosing to focus on other matters, that we felt were more important.
So, the disease is here – another “C” word, with the media’s coverage inducing anxiety and fear. You ask where’s the healing of which I am speaking?
It is in the way we are beginning to come together as communities and as one nation.
Despite some rebels defying government guidance, there are encouraging signs that people in the UK are seeing that we really are one nation; that we can defeat this disease, but that we can only do it together.
The tensions and ill-feeling that became so rooted over Britain's exit from the EU seem to have fast disappeared. In the words of the UK Prime Minister, we must send this disease “packing”.
But we must do it working in harmony.
A verse in The Bible's Letter to Christians in ancient Rome declares “In everything God is working for the good of tho
se who love Hm”.
It appears that, in the face of calamity, while we see a disease with unprecedented power, we also are witnessing something equally unprecedented: healing for our nation.
And, hopefully, this is what will happen across the nations of our world.
There’s a long way to go, but we can be encouraged that our difficult pathway is also our Road to Renewal.