Link to full article here … Practice Hospitality, Especially during COVID-19
EXCERPT …
2. Practicing the Christian ethic of hospitality under COVID-19 demonstrates our fear of God, not of men (and the virus they may carry). We are to live coram Deo—before the face of God.
Practicing hospitality when we could be killed by (or kill) a person standing a few feet away boggles the mind and wearies the soul. Psalm 150:6 declares, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” But we live in a world where the very act of breathing is dangerous.
Christians must look to God—and his glory—more than we look to the physical danger around us. As John Calvin writes:
God expects a very different kind of practical wisdom from us [Christians], namely that we should meditate on his judgments in a time of adversity and on his goodness in delivering us from danger. For surely it is not by mere chance that a person falls into the hands of enemies or robbers; neither is it by chance that a person is rescued from them. But what we must constantly keep in mind is that all afflictions are God’s rod, and therefore there is no remedy for them other than God’s grace.1
Precautions, medical interventions, and vaccines have value, but our ultimate hope is not in any of them. God is sovereign over every breath we take, even the breath of someone who carries disease and enters our six-foot bubble. If “all afflictions are God’s rod,” our task is to fear God more than man and the virus he may carry.