Fear in the Viral Wilderness
Fear in the Viral Wilderness
Based on the text Exodus 17:1-7
Moses has a problem. Through a series of events in Egypt, he found himself a leader that he didn’t want to be, leading his people out of slavery that they didn’t want, into a wilderness that no one knew about. And now, his people are complaining, holding him responsible for following God’s will for them. When we in North America read about the wilderness, we assume old-growth forests shading streams, animals lurking just beyond our sight, birds singing in the trees, and lush if not thorny undergrowth. But for the Hebrews, the wilderness was a desert, sparse of vegetation, animals, and water. The Sonoran or Painted Deserts outside of Las Vegas and in Arizona are closer to what the Hebrews found themselves in than forests. We find ourselves in our 21st Century version of a wilderness, defined by medical authorities, public health strategies, and personal and community hygiene, fleeing from a largely unknown disease-causing virus, the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The Hebrews are clamoring for that most basic need beyond food: water. The human body can live for weeks without food, but without water, it can hold out for only three or four days. Extreme thirst is an indication of a very real need and a very near threat of death. The Hebrews are almost looking back nostalgically to their lives as slaves in Egypt. Compared to the wilderness, slavery almost seems like a comfortable life. It was predictable, you knew where you stood in society, and there was food and water available. There were hardships, yes, but each Hebrew man and woman felt the support of the community that they lived in, and learned how to cope through generations of experience handed down. They weren’t faced with the unknown, nearly every day, and they found a perverse sort of comfort from the predictability of a life of slavery. We too are afraid, not knowing what the next day will bring, what other bad news of deaths, shortages of diagnostic tests for COVID-19, or bare shelves of food we will hear. We no longer trust each other, or trust the leaders who fail us. We feel separated from God.
But the Hebrews are in the wilderness, free from slavery and able to follow the loving will of God, and they don’t like it. Life is no longer predictable. Life is hard, and they are closer to death than they were while enslaved. They hear of the promised land flowing with milk and honey, but they don’t have the luxury of flipping forward in scripture to the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua to see that they arrive at the Jordan river and Joshua leads them across to the promised land. All they know is what they are experiencing at that time and place, and they do the only thing that they feel they have the power to do: complain and point fingers of blame. God is not present with them as God had promised, so they believe, and Moses is left with just his faith.
On Wednesday, I received word that I would be working from home for the foreseeable future. I have an office set up in the basement of my home, so I was prepared to work in physical isolation from my teammates. I didn’t have much reason to leave the house, so I haven’t been to the grocery stores until yesterday. But, between the photos posted on social media and what I saw at my neighborhood Kroger, I was struck by what and how much people are buying. A lot of it didn’t make sense. Bottled water was a premium item, except for water from Dasani. Why? Only black-eyed peas were left in the dried beans shelves. Why? Toilet paper and paper towels were rarer than an available hotel room in Louisville for Thunder and Derby. I have read about why people are hoarding those two items, and it has to do with fear. Buying something familiar that feels good to hold on to creates an illusion of comfort. But from fear comes panic, and from panic comes irrational choices and decisions. I realized that it is the same fear that the Hebrews felt in the wilderness, the same panic that they felt when they had no water, and the same irrationality they had when they started to blame Moses.
The COVID-19 virus is scary, because we’ve never seen it in humans before. All we can say is that it resembles other coronaviruses that we do know about and have had experience with. To say that we’ll survive COVID-19 is to say that there is a promised land in the future, where we will be free of the fear that we have today. But we don’t have the luxury of flipping the pages of history to see how it all ends. All we know is that life was fine during Christmas, and we were looking forward to Valentine’s Day, the NCAA basketball tournaments, the Derby Festival, and the Kentucky Derby itself. Now, we can’t even go to church, because of the risk of spreading or being infected with the COVID-19 virus is too great. The water of predictability, comfort, and normalcy that we desperately need is not around us, and we fear dying. Not even a bottle of Dasani water or a freezer full of meat or a closet full of hand sanitizer or toilet paper can save us from the unpredictability of each day since early March. The wisdom of previous generations who have lived through a similar, fast-moving infectious diseases is not available to us in 2020. And in our unaddressed fear, we hoard, we fight over food as if the stores will never be restocked, and we point fingers at anyone, looking for any kind of relief through assigning blame. Where is God in our wilderness of the COVID-19 virus?
God command Moses to take some of the leaders from the Hebrews and follow him to a rock outcropping. There, Moses does not just strike his staff against the rock and make water flow, he unequivocally shows his faith in God to be present in that moment. That water is now present is not the point. The point is that Moses had faith in God strong enough to overcome the fear and panic he felt himself, and he was able to think clearly and use the staff he had to show his faith in God by making water flow from a seemingly impossible source: rock. The elders of the Hebrews saw this, and brought back to the people what they needed, which was hope. Neither the elders nor the people could know how or when their journey would end, but now they had hope, and understood that it would be faith that would carry them forward in the wilderness.
I have begun to see that same action of finding faith in an impossible scenario in posts to the Nextdoor social media platform. I have seen posts of people offering to run errands, care for children while parents have to leave for work, or do light odd jobs. This is the voice of God, speaking through the people who post, saying to us: do not be afraid. I am here, says God. It is quite possible that several people on my street have more food than they can eat before it goes bad. The voice of God could be heard by sharing food with each other, or even cooking with shared food items from several households for the whole street, without endangering the health of anyone. What else could we do to make the voice of God heard in our wilderness? How else could we turn our faith into words of quiet hope and visible support for everyone else?
We are not alone, just as the Hebrews were not alone. We need to turn away from faithless fear, and turn toward the voice of God that we can hear in every other person. We need to take our staffs, in whatever form they are in, and strike a rock, in whatever form it is in, and let the water of peace through faith in God flow. It is that water of faith in God and in ourselves that will quench our fearful thirst. God is here, God is with us, and we will suffer from illness and the discomfort of isolation. But there is a promised land beyond, and we will find it if we can hold on to our faith.
Based on the text Exodus 17:1-7
Moses has a problem. Through a series of events in Egypt, he found himself a leader that he didn’t want to be, leading his people out of slavery that they didn’t want, into a wilderness that no one knew about. And now, his people are complaining, holding him responsible for following God’s will for them. When we in North America read about the wilderness, we assume old-growth forests shading streams, animals lurking just beyond our sight, birds singing in the trees, and lush if not thorny undergrowth. But for the Hebrews, the wilderness was a desert, sparse of vegetation, animals, and water. The Sonoran or Painted Deserts outside of Las Vegas and in Arizona are closer to what the Hebrews found themselves in than forests. We find ourselves in our 21st Century version of a wilderness, defined by medical authorities, public health strategies, and personal and community hygiene, fleeing from a largely unknown disease-causing virus, the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The Hebrews are clamoring for that most basic need beyond food: water. The human body can live for weeks without food, but without water, it can hold out for only three or four days. Extreme thirst is an indication of a very real need and a very near threat of death. The Hebrews are almost looking back nostalgically to their lives as slaves in Egypt. Compared to the wilderness, slavery almost seems like a comfortable life. It was predictable, you knew where you stood in society, and there was food and water available. There were hardships, yes, but each Hebrew man and woman felt the support of the community that they lived in, and learned how to cope through generations of experience handed down. They weren’t faced with the unknown, nearly every day, and they found a perverse sort of comfort from the predictability of a life of slavery. We too are afraid, not knowing what the next day will bring, what other bad news of deaths, shortages of diagnostic tests for COVID-19, or bare shelves of food we will hear. We no longer trust each other, or trust the leaders who fail us. We feel separated from God.
But the Hebrews are in the wilderness, free from slavery and able to follow the loving will of God, and they don’t like it. Life is no longer predictable. Life is hard, and they are closer to death than they were while enslaved. They hear of the promised land flowing with milk and honey, but they don’t have the luxury of flipping forward in scripture to the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua to see that they arrive at the Jordan river and Joshua leads them across to the promised land. All they know is what they are experiencing at that time and place, and they do the only thing that they feel they have the power to do: complain and point fingers of blame. God is not present with them as God had promised, so they believe, and Moses is left with just his faith.
On Wednesday, I received word that I would be working from home for the foreseeable future. I have an office set up in the basement of my home, so I was prepared to work in physical isolation from my teammates. I didn’t have much reason to leave the house, so I haven’t been to the grocery stores until yesterday. But, between the photos posted on social media and what I saw at my neighborhood Kroger, I was struck by what and how much people are buying. A lot of it didn’t make sense. Bottled water was a premium item, except for water from Dasani. Why? Only black-eyed peas were left in the dried beans shelves. Why? Toilet paper and paper towels were rarer than an available hotel room in Louisville for Thunder and Derby. I have read about why people are hoarding those two items, and it has to do with fear. Buying something familiar that feels good to hold on to creates an illusion of comfort. But from fear comes panic, and from panic comes irrational choices and decisions. I realized that it is the same fear that the Hebrews felt in the wilderness, the same panic that they felt when they had no water, and the same irrationality they had when they started to blame Moses.
The COVID-19 virus is scary, because we’ve never seen it in humans before. All we can say is that it resembles other coronaviruses that we do know about and have had experience with. To say that we’ll survive COVID-19 is to say that there is a promised land in the future, where we will be free of the fear that we have today. But we don’t have the luxury of flipping the pages of history to see how it all ends. All we know is that life was fine during Christmas, and we were looking forward to Valentine’s Day, the NCAA basketball tournaments, the Derby Festival, and the Kentucky Derby itself. Now, we can’t even go to church, because of the risk of spreading or being infected with the COVID-19 virus is too great. The water of predictability, comfort, and normalcy that we desperately need is not around us, and we fear dying. Not even a bottle of Dasani water or a freezer full of meat or a closet full of hand sanitizer or toilet paper can save us from the unpredictability of each day since early March. The wisdom of previous generations who have lived through a similar, fast-moving infectious diseases is not available to us in 2020. And in our unaddressed fear, we hoard, we fight over food as if the stores will never be restocked, and we point fingers at anyone, looking for any kind of relief through assigning blame. Where is God in our wilderness of the COVID-19 virus?
God command Moses to take some of the leaders from the Hebrews and follow him to a rock outcropping. There, Moses does not just strike his staff against the rock and make water flow, he unequivocally shows his faith in God to be present in that moment. That water is now present is not the point. The point is that Moses had faith in God strong enough to overcome the fear and panic he felt himself, and he was able to think clearly and use the staff he had to show his faith in God by making water flow from a seemingly impossible source: rock. The elders of the Hebrews saw this, and brought back to the people what they needed, which was hope. Neither the elders nor the people could know how or when their journey would end, but now they had hope, and understood that it would be faith that would carry them forward in the wilderness.
I have begun to see that same action of finding faith in an impossible scenario in posts to the Nextdoor social media platform. I have seen posts of people offering to run errands, care for children while parents have to leave for work, or do light odd jobs. This is the voice of God, speaking through the people who post, saying to us: do not be afraid. I am here, says God. It is quite possible that several people on my street have more food than they can eat before it goes bad. The voice of God could be heard by sharing food with each other, or even cooking with shared food items from several households for the whole street, without endangering the health of anyone. What else could we do to make the voice of God heard in our wilderness? How else could we turn our faith into words of quiet hope and visible support for everyone else?
We are not alone, just as the Hebrews were not alone. We need to turn away from faithless fear, and turn toward the voice of God that we can hear in every other person. We need to take our staffs, in whatever form they are in, and strike a rock, in whatever form it is in, and let the water of peace through faith in God flow. It is that water of faith in God and in ourselves that will quench our fearful thirst. God is here, God is with us, and we will suffer from illness and the discomfort of isolation. But there is a promised land beyond, and we will find it if we can hold on to our faith.
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