Submitted by Michele S.
From a post by Princeton Theological Seminary president, M. Craig Barnes (read the full post here):
“(…) the pandemic has also revealed how much we belong to people we don’t even know. It has exposed our radical dependence on one another and our created relatedness with all humanity, a vision that God has always seen but we too often miss. People working on the front lines in hospitals and grocery stores and delivery trucks understand that we belong to one another, and so they put themselves in harm’s way to serve others. Their example calls all of us to see in new ways the breadth of those to whom we belong, as siblings in the human family.”
As followers of Christ, the Great Physician, the Life Giver, the Healer, we belong to:
–the elderly and those with compromised immune systems
–the children going hungry in our nation
–Asians and Asian Americans who are experiencing prejudicial hate rhetoric and hate crimes, because they are falsely blamed for the pandemic
–African-Americans who are dying from this virus at vastly disproportionate levels because of systemic injustice
–the nations of the world without the medical equipment and resources to combat the virus and who will suffer devastating losses
President Barnes concludes:
“Quite a bit is being written about how we will come through this pandemic differently than we entered it. My prayer is that part of that difference will be that the church will come to see that our mission is not to make contributions to distant people when it is affordable, but to care for all humanity to whom we belong.”
Life Together 