The Grace of God in The Face of Covid

The Grace of God in The Face of Covid

By Scott McIntyre

This entire article is based on the premise that God exists; the Bible is his revealed guidance for mankind; and that the translation I use, plus my understanding of what I’ve read in those pages, is accurate. I call this the B.I.T.; Big If Theory.

As I write this, Worldometers.info is reporting that over 7.8 billion people are alive on planet earth and the number has grown by over 8 million so far this year. At the same time, Covid-19 is killing people at a rate most alive have never seen. As I compose this article, 2,290,488 deaths have been reported to the World Health Organization. 

And yet, compared to some events in history, we’re in relatively good shape, which I attribute to God’s grace toward mankind. Other than a word that rhymes with another in my post’s title, just what is ‘grace’?

It’s not a word with one universally accepted definition but as I’m using it here, it means God’s favor or mercy bestowed on his creation without anything done on their part to deserve it.

As I explained in a previous article here; regarding a reader’s question of how the deity in Scripture could be considered a loving God; Adam, the first of God’s human creations, took a bite of something he was prohibited from eating. “Death, and every negative human characteristic we experience today,” became part of society. “Without being obligated to mitigate the negative effects of man’s initial sin,” God has allowed humankind to accomplish “great things over the years, and, even amid a world of sorrow and pain, there are still innumerable instances of joy beyond measure, which could be the result of God coming to the ‘rescue’ of his world” or for the sake of this article, his repeated demonstration of grace.

As a world we’ve faced ruthless leaders, disastrous weather, stunning business failures, and many more negative issues, and yet, can anyone say, they’ve never experienced joy in their heart or haven’t once had laughter explode from their being. Examples of grace?

The effects of Covid-19 are likely the worst-case scenario most in the world have ever seen from an infectious disease. Yet, so far, it pales by comparison to some of these plagues that have found their way into our history. I hope it remains far down the scale of the worst spreaders ever and, if that happens, I think it gives us a good picture of how God may be at work.

Over the years, science, fueled by the brain God created for mankind, assuming the B.I.T. is true, has made remarkable strides in the prevention and treatment of illnesses that inflict mankind. We don’t know how many deaths have been avoided, during this pandemic, by the use of today’s ventilators, but it must be sizeable and, according to the National Library of Medicine, “today’s typical intensive care unit (ICU) ventilator did not begin to be developed until the 1940s.” 

I can’t imagine how today’s culture could ‘deserve’ medical benefits like this more than those in the past, yet we have them and because of that, we’re dealing with this virus entirely differently than we would have less than 100 years ago.

I’m biased in my writing, being both Christian and an Evangelical one to boot, but it makes sense to me that the help mankind is receiving, in this battle against a terrible sickness, is coming from the hand and heart of God and is not merited by us. That’s why it’s called grace.