When COVID comes home

Psalm 23:2 "He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters"

Dear CBC Family,

As some of you may know my son Nathan came down with COVID-19. He works in a job that has a lot of face to face human contact so I guess it was only a matter of time before he and the virus met. At first it was like a cold but by day two he looked pretty bad. He has now been fighting this illness for more than a week. Sometimes I think he is past it and then it comes back with a vengeance. I can certainly say it isn’t like a normal flu. One step forward and then two backwards, three forward one back, it’s a process that takes a lot of patience. It’s been hard on him so I would appreciate prayers that the Lord would raise him up. That said, God isn’t wasting the time.

The urgent care doctor said the delta variant is quite contagious and that everyone in the house would probably get it quickly. He turned out to be a prophet. The day after Nathan’s symptoms began I developed some of my own. I had a fierce cough, mild fever and felt like a car was parked on my chest. Three days later I was improving while Nathan still wasn’t. The doctor told me why this is the case and if you want to know I’m happy to tell you but you might not like the answer. One thing you can be sure of if COVID comes to your home is there will be no shortage of people to tell you what you should do. I believe they all mean well so it’s nice to be loved but it can be overwhelming at times. One thing we all have to do is discern where to put our trust (a lesson the pandemic has taught me).

Another thing this pandemic has taught me is the value of truth. Personally, I will not repeat information without checking out its accuracy because of my concern for the gospel. I would encourage you to do the same, so follow my reasoning here. As a pastor, and Christian, I recognize that one false statement a person makes will be used to taint every statement that person makes. Can you believe what a person says about one thing (gospel) if 50% of their statements about other things (COVID) are false? I try to put the same effort into talking about anything as I do into speaking about the Bible. I know, for example, if I say something false about the content of a vaccine then that false statement will be used to justify calling statements I make about Christ false as well. The gospel doesn’t need that so I’ll leave the debating of pandemic topics to others. The Bible calls us to speak the truth in love which I would take to mean everything we say on every topic, not just the Bible ones. The reason for that is consistency. It’s the truth of our regular conversations that establish whether we can be trusted in the first place. Perhaps this is one reason the scripture says “be slow to speak and quick to hear” because by doing so it gives us opportunity to check our facts before we discredit the message of Christ by speaking things that are false.

As the Lord has made me to lie down for these days I have had extra time to read, pray and think. It stinks to be sick but in the school of Christ there is never a “sick day”……. School is always in session.

I’m not sure if I will be back at church this weekend or not. That depends on the Lord and His servants (the doctors) who said that when Nathan is symptom free and fever free for 24 hours (without the help of meds) I can go out of the house (if I am symptom free myself). In any case the Lord and His word will be there at CBC this weekend.

I miss you all,

Pastor Scott