WAVES May 22, 2020
There is much talk during the
past few days about waves... no, not the kind we enjoy during summer break at
the beach, but the deadlier one pertaining to the disease. I understand that far too many experts have
different interpretations and ways of explaining where we are now, the crests
and the troughs, each trying to defend their views while defending their
positions, but it all just shows that people are really becoming increasingly
paranoid and irrational.
What is it about something
unfixed that unnerves us? Maybe it is the seeming hopelessness of the
situation, where we see sickness and death increasing around the world, and yet
we are still too far from seeing a resolution as to how to cure and how to
really specifically prevent such tragedies from happening. And all of these are truly threatening our
very own livelihood and existence, what with losing our jobs and sources of
income, and not knowing from where will we get that which will enable us to put
food in our mouths in the coming days.
Any kind of media exposes the
width, narrowness, depth, and shallowness of people’s vocabularies, priorities
and thinking, and it’s sad. If only we
read and think a little more deeply, we would know that one timelessly great
guy has said it long ago: “Deep calls to deep at the noise of Your waterspouts
[heavy rains]: all Your waves and Your billows [heavy clouds] are gone over me.
Yet the LORD will command His loving-kindness in the day time, and in the night
His song shall be with me, and my prayer to the GOD of my life.” (Psalms
42:7-8).
Maybe because in our quest to
be ever more knowledgeable, to the point of creating and trying to infuse
intelligence on the things we create, we have refused to acknowledge that we
too are created by an Infinite Designer, so many things in our bodies are
unexplainable even by the deep and most specialized molecular sciences, and
that He who ordered the cosmic universe also ordered the perfect universe of
complete factories in the trillions of cells that compose each of our bodies.
We have focused too much on the trees; we did not see the forest. We fail to realize that the fame, the
connections, the wealth we have gained in the rat race of life are really just
smaller than a grain of sand when viewed by the One who sees several hundred
storeys far above us. And in this
pandemic, it strikes us bluntly, they are dispensable and meaningless.
I believe it’s time we shift
our focus away from the terrifying challenges the world and modern life throw
at us every day, and instead look for the “...terrible things in righteousness
will You answer us, O GOD of our salvation, who are the confidence of all the
ends of the earth, and of those who are far off on the sea...who stills the
noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.”
(Psalm 65:5 & 7).
Yes, we must still do our part
to keep clean, safe, sane and healthy, even at the expense of being
physically/socially distant and isolated.
Yes, we must allow people, especially those in the know, to tell us what
is happening, to explain to us why they are happening, and to give us laws to
show us what to do. But we mustn’t fail to see the backdrop of all the
tribulations we as a planet, are experiencing now, for it goes beyond climate
change, food choices, sanitary practices, ideologies, politics, the law of
supply and demand, recessions, failed globalizations, peace and trade treaties,
and weakening of the global supply chain.
It calls us back to the One who fearfully “...afflicts me [us] with all
Your waves” (Psalm 88:7), and yet wonderfully, “...rules the raging of the sea:
when its waves arise, You still them” (Psalm 89:9).
Only when we have to and
actually do render accountability of our faults as a community of nations will
we find inner peace and security, no matter how many waves we encounter, for,
“He makes the storm a calm, so that its waves are still” (Psalm 107:29).
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