What if the swine flu becomes pandemic?

What if the swine flu becomes bad?  Really bad?  Of pandemic proportions?

How will the Christian respond?

As Al Mohler notes this morning in “Love in Time of Swine Flu,” such an epidemic will create unique opportunities.  [Aside:  neither he nor I are predicting such an impact from this flu is imminent, only that it is wise to consider our responses to potential circumstances before they arrive.]

Several years ago, as the second millennium A.D. was moving into the third millennium, there were a not insignificant number of people who worried irrationally and unrighteously about some measure of impending global doom — not a viral pandemic but a digital viral pandemic.  And in too many circumstances believers in Jesus Christ were stimulating this ungodly thinking.  My goal then — and since then — has been to help believers think in Biblical terms about all the events of their lives, including the catastrophic.

So should something like the current swine flu become pandemic, how should believers in Christ respond?  [Even if the swine flu proves to be much ado about nothing, every individual still will not be able to escape the end that the swine flu brings — death.  So this remains a good question to consider.]

Mohler suggests that there are at least two prominent considerations:  “At the onset, we must remember that sickness and death are part of the curse.…At the same time, Christians have honored Christ by ministering to the sick.”

To the first he notes that such knowledge should lead us to trust in God:

The Christian’s confidence is in Christ alone.  We trust that God has a purpose in our suffering, and that this purpose is perfect, even if yet undiscerned.  As Luther assured his flock, “If God wants to have you sick like this, what He wants will certainly be better than what we want.”

That is,  in his loving and omnipotent sovereignty, He is imminently trustworthy.  And tumultuous circumstances are always given to demonstrate the frailty of this life, the glory of the next life, and His singular worthiness of being the object of our affections.

To his latter assertion, Mohler notes,

In Geneva, John Calvin taught his pastors to visit the sick as a primary duty of “a true and faithful minister.”  As Calvin explained, “the greatest need which a man ever has of the spiritual doctrine of our Lord is when His hand visits him with afflictions, whether of disease or other evils, and specially at the hour of death.”

Frankly, this is why I appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to do funerals — because rare is the opportunity that one has to minister the Word and grace of God to individuals as when at the death bed or grave side.  People need to hear the message of the trustworthiness of God and the grace of His gospel, and death and impending death afford that opportunity like few others.

So if the swine flu, or some other pandemic arrive, may we be ready to seize that opportunity as a means of ministering the grace of God to suffering people.