Pandemic, Pentacost, and Paul (Acts 21, 17-38)

“Covid-19 is not a blessing. It is one more obvious, terrible instance of a broken world. But amid all the reasonable concern, we shouldn’t lose sight of the deeper cause of our anxiety—our mortal fear, [death]—and the unprecedented chance within this life to become fuller, richer and more joyful human beings...No sane person would ever give thanks for a pandemic. But if we take the chance it gives us to become truth-tellers, lovers and reconcilers, we may well wind up giving thanks for what we have become.”

—Kavin Rowe, Professor of New Testament, Duke University, article from the Wall Street Journal

From Haters to Lovers (1 John 3:11-24)

“If I were sitting on the end of the pier on a summer day enjoying the sunshine and the air, and someone came along and jumped into the water and got drowned ‘to prove his love for me’,I should find it quite unintelligible. I might be much in need of love, but an act in no rational relation to any of my necessities could not prove it. But if I had fallen over the pier and were drowning, and someone sprang into the water, and at the cost of making my peril, or what but for him would be my fate, his own, save me from death, then I should say, ‘Greater love hath no man than this.’ I should say it intelligibly, because there would be an intelligent relation between the sacrifice which love made and the necessity from which it redeemed.”

— James Dennon, The Death of Christ