How Long, O Lord?
Walking by faith during COVID-19
by Amy Crouch
Two weeks ago, I was planning for club meetings, birthday parties, and prelims – a typical set of priorities for a Cornell student. We were all enjoying the warmer Ithaca weather, just beginning to play Frisbee on the Arts Quad and sitting on the Slope for sunsets.
I don’t know about you, but that feels like about ten years ago.
In a few days, the coronavirus pandemic has transformed our plans, our goals — and our fears. My own generation – unable to remember 9/11, let alone the Vietnam War or World War II – has never experienced this level of mass panic and disruption. How can we possibly weather the coming months?
I believe that the Christian faith offers living, practical answers. If Jesus is who He claims to be – the Savior of the world and the conqueror of Death and Hades – that has immediate consequences for how we live our lives. If the Bible is divinely inspired, the very breath of a holy God, then it should speak into this time of crisis. Now, as always, Christians must be guided by the voice of Scripture.
1. LAMENT
The Friday that classes were suspended was a blur for me. As I called my dad and planned to leave campus the next day, it hit me that I needed to fit all my goodbyes in the 20 hours between the email from Martha Pollack and the drive home. I texted friends frantically. I had a final dinner at Risley. I ate not one but two farewell breakfasts. And as I tried to process the news with friends, we realized we’d been plunged into a new way of life: mourning.
We’re mourning for the thousands of deaths worldwide. We’re mourning for the hundreds of thousands of people scarred by this crisis: the international student who can’t get home, the waitress who lives off of tips, the student of Asian descent who is surrounded by cruel words and looks. We’re mourning for the deep social isolation we’re about to enter – Zoom can’t replace a long, warm hug – and the loss of precious months with our Cornell communities.
As I’ve grieved, I’ve found deep comfort in the honesty of the Christian faith. Although false teachers have often sold the watered-down message that following Jesus leads to worldly gain, orthodox Christianity is the opposite of false comfort. Instead, it’s a faith of long-suffering – what J. R. R. Tolkien called “the long defeat” in the eyes of the world. [1]
While I believe that our good God made His world very good, there’s no denying that it’s been crushed and disfigured: viruses kill, the atmosphere chokes, we hurl hate at our neighbors. Why doesn’t God do anything?
This question isn’t new; it appears throughout the Bible. Scripture isn’t just about happy people thanking God for how great their lives are – it’s full of exiles, widows, orphans, and prisoners of war who make sure God knows all about their affliction. “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” asks the prophet Jeremiah. [2] “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” says grieving Martha. [3] “How long?” is a particularly pressing question: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” [4] “How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field wither?” [5] “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?” [6]
The Christian tradition answers that God does do something. He does not ignore or put a Band-Aid on the universe, but He enters into our own suffering. He is crushed and disfigured with the world; He becomes “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” [7] The Creator of the heavens is pierced and scorned. In a crisis like this – as I write, over 200,000 cases worldwide and 9,000 deaths – God suffers with us.
God undergoes such unimaginable suffering (the sorrows of seven billion!) because He loves us. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” says Jesus. “Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” [8] So as we mourn the tragedy of these days, complaints aren’t wrong or faithless; in fact, we have models in Scripture for expressing our own sorrows. God will incline His ear to hear our lament. God wants to laugh and grieve with us.
2. LOVE
But if all we do is complain, we are hardly obeying God’s calling. “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” a lawyer asks Jesus. He replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” [9]
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. If we believe this, it will transform every minute of every hour of our day – especially the coming days of the pandemic.
See, as a healthy 19-year-old, I’m at little risk from this virus personally. If I get bored of social distancing and go out for some fun, I probably won’t die. If all I care about is loving myself, why bother with all this handwashing and quarantining?
But if I want to obey God, I must remember my friend with lupus, my grandmother with Parkinson’s, my colleague with asthma. I should act not to improve my own life, but to protect them. Honestly? This isn’t glamorous. Small sacrifices won’t make headlines. But right now, in this hour, I have the opportunity – no, am called – to make thousands of tiny sacrifices over and over. Every time I scrub my hands, disinfect my phone, and wipe down doorknobs, I’m dying to myself.
When Jesus comes in glory (though we know not the day or the hour), we know what He will say: “Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” [10] In this hour, let us wash our hands for the poor, the immunocompromised, and the vulnerable – and for Jesus.
3. REJOICE
Faith has one last, terrifying gift for us: joy.
It is right for us to lament. It is right for us to offer ourselves in sacrifice. But throughout and after sorrow and sacrifice, there is joy.
The Christian faith tells us of a God who has overcome death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. If this is true, there is nothing to fear. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice!” says Paul to the persecuted church in Philippi, writing from his own prison cell. [11]
This doesn’t invalidate our sorrow. Christian joy is such an astounding gift because it doesn’t ignore suffering, but transforms it. Paul has experienced more physical and emotional pain than most students at Cornell could dream of: “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.” [12]
This man is telling us to rejoice.
Faith in our Savior Jesus produces joy within our sufferings. Scripture’s countless laments are often grim, but they almost always end in trust and hope. The author of Lamentations, after mourning the broken city of Jerusalem, recalls that “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” [13] The Lord tells Jeremiah: “In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without man or beast...there shall be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness.’” [14] “How long, O Lord?” begins Psalm 13. “Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” But it ends with a declaration of confidence: “I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” [15]
Let this be our prayer. After voicing our complaint, let us remember the great things that the Lord has done, and trust that we will sing to Him in joy again.
As with our sacrifices, our acts of hope in this pandemic might look pretty small. Spending time outdoors in God’s good creation. Beginning and ending our days in prayer. Avoiding information overload, perhaps by setting specific times during the day for news. Using spare time for prayer and meditation, not merely distraction. Worshiping and communing in small groups, virtually or in-person; Jesus’s assurance that he is with two or three gathered together is not only a blessed comfort, but excellent advice for a pandemic. Through small, strong choices like these, let’s live in the Christian paradox of joy and sorrow.
Where do joy and sacrifice and sorrow all meet? At the cross. There is no anguish greater than Jesus’s cry from the cross, a quote from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But Jesus knew that this Psalm doesn’t end there. It goes on:
“For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.”
God is here, laying down His life for us and with us. He’s listening. And we cling to the faith that the very last words of the Psalm are and will be true:
“Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.”
May these words be in our mouths soon, O Lord. Let us be ready to proclaim a message of hope. Let us be confident that our children and our children’s children will praise you. Remind us, in these dark times, that it is finished; You have done it.
SOURCES
1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 372.
2. Jeremiah 12:1 (ESV)
3. John 11:21 (ESV)
4. Psalm 13:1 (ESV)
5. Jeremiah 12:3 (ESV)
6. Psalm 74:10 (ESV)
7. Matthew 10:29 (ESV)
8. Isaiah 53:3 (ESV)
9. Matthew 22:34-40 (ESV)
10. Matthew 25:40 (NIV)
11. Philippians 4:4 (ESV)
12. 2 Corinthians 11:24-27 (ESV)
13. Lamentations 3:22 (ESV)
14. Jeremiah 33:10-11 (ESV)
15. Psalm 13 (ESV)
16. Psalm 22 (ESV)