The Good Infection
Back at the start of the pandemic, one of the big medical schools (I’m not sure which) produced a graphic cartoon to show how highly infectious diseases like respiratory viruses spread. It showed a large box with dozens of blue dots bouncing off each other. Then one red dot entered the box. When it touched a blue dot, that dot turned red, as did any dot it touched. Every red dot turned any blue dot it touched red. Soon, most of the dots turned red.
That’s how cold and flu bugs spread across the world, although not ever at 100%. Its principle applies to ideas as well. Ideas stick to people and spread quickly, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. They can sweep across cultures. Ready examples are in popular music. The Beatles got so popular that their live performances were drowned out by the audience’s screams. Or K-Pop – which is a Korean dance music craze that began about 10-15 years ago and remains wildly popular.
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Your Call
Often, when faithful people encounter hardship and tragedy, we reflexively say something like, “God has a plan” or “Everything happens for a reason.” We trust God, even when we cannot see any good in the situation. There’s a gap between those two a mile wide and we cannot see any connection, but we remain faithful. This morning’s scriptures bring us to consider how our faith intersects with our lives. Our most difficult trials, our deepest losses and hardest decisions can and should reinforce our faith in how God fills that huge gap.
When we say, “God has a plan,” that doesn’t mean he is actively laying out your life as a particular maze for you to find clues and grope your way through, and heaven is your reward at the end. When we say, “Everything happens for a reason,” it’s not as if God has designed your life as an obstacle course with tragedies and disasters tailored just for you. As Lamentations 3:33 says, “for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.”
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New Creation
The creation story in Genesis describes God bringing chaos into order, step by step. When he creates humanity, he goes a further step. The key verse is Genesis 1:27, which is perhaps the most important sentence ever written “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”
We come into the picture, in the image of God, and God immediately includes us in his work. We are to continue to bring order to the chaos. We see words like “dominion” and “subdue” that evoke a sense of control, but they are also infused with stewardship. It is not our creation to use as we see fit. It is God’s creation into which he has invited us to participate as co-creators.
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