Testing busybodies and antibodies

Daktari has a saying he likes to give his internal medicine residents.  “Ordering a test is like picking your nose.  You gotta know what you’re gonna do with the results.”

Recently there has been such a stillness and loss of traction for the world that geologists say the earth’s crust is literally more still during the pandemic. They say it’s like a stillness they’d measure on Christmas day.  Could it be a geological Sabbath?  Psalm 46 says “Be still AND know that I am God”. We are now 5 weeks into being still(er) and might have started knowing that God is still God (or at least detecting that we are not actually God- nor is the CDC, the WHO, the scientists, or even- gasp-the economy).

Here in America, most people do well in the shallows of busy, busy, busy living but not really Life.  Back in our Kenya life we learned that the Swahili word for foreigner is “Mzungu”, meaning “one who moves around a lot”.  Our time in Kenya really was preparing us in so many ways. Now we are all brought to a standstill- a bizarre world-wide standstill!  And we can pause to listen. What is God saying to us in his word?  Can you stop and listen? Are we still so busy even home-bound and sitting around, paying homage to glowing rectangle gods? Or might we actually kneel in awestruck wonder before the One True God and plead for his deliverance from this dread disease, his direction out of chaos into a place of peace?  Are we too busy to pray even when the things of earth are growing strangely dim?  This is busybody-testing time.  What will your test results show?

Frank Laubach, in the precarious post WWII era of 1946, wrote a tiny book called "Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World".  In it he says on p.17 "So this is not a time for confidence, not is it a time for despair; it is the time to turn to God.  It is the time for humility, penitence, desperate resolve, rectitude, obedience to the will of God, all-out sincerity!"  That is where I got inspiration in the middle of March when I realized this could possibly be the fight of our lifetime for our family.

I am the wife of an infectious disease physician.  He is certainly a health care worker for whom many prayers have been prayed.  We had a neighbor who had a dream of praying over Michael as the Lord was anointing him!  We are so thankful for the force field of prayer and protection of the Lord over this city during the pandemic.  We can almost see the Mighty Fortress holding back a tsunami of Covid-19.  Prayer is a powerful weapon against darkness!  We are not testing God.  We are trusting.

The daktari is a man of few words.  He has no good words for Covid-19 antibody testing.  While it seems to be the next craze for a world gone mad, it is a test that produces no good results. Nobody really understands it yet.  It is possible that in the future studies will tell us if positive people are still positive and if they have had re-infections or not. But nobody knows if it means they will stay healthy and for how long or if they are dread virus shedders and for how long.  It seems to be a lateral motion test for the sake of motion and for our busybodies to chase after.  Beware. The results are a bit of a booger. 

If you want to rush out and stockpile on some supplies this Covid -April 19, try looking for faith.  Run to God, run to the Word of God, run to prayer.  Run to your reservoir of faith and see if there’s anything left, even a tiny seed. Dive into your emergency savings tank of faith. When scarcity abounds, faith can even be borrowed from others to kickstart something for your own.  Get out of the shallows, dig down deep and find faith that actually multiplies when the global supply chain starts using it.  These test results can clearly produce seeds of faith for another generation, or not.