Fragile - Handle with Care

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Fragile - Handle with Care

by David Sellnow

It was one of the first days that panic buying had begun. At a local store, the bread loaves were gone from the shelves. There were some higher-priced specialty items still available—dessert breads, breakfast bagels, spinach and herb wraps—but no regular bread. As I stood there, my mind went to the famous words Marie Antoinette never actually said: “Let them eat cake.” French law in the 18^th century required bakeries to sell fancy breads at regular bread prices if supplies of ordinary loaves ran out. But in the days leading up to the French Revolution, such a law made little difference. There was no bread of any kind available to the common people. Harvests had failed and famine conditions prevailed.

In our present moment, basic commodities are scarce in store aisles because of fears of what tomorrow may bring. The spread of disease, COVID-19, has crushed our confidence in the systems of government and healthcare and economics that we have set up. We are riddled with worries and questions. Will more businesses be forced to close? Will our own jobs and income be interrupted? Will we be told to shelter in place and avoid all interactions with others? Some locations have experienced such contractions and restrictions already. We’ve been shown that a microscopic virus has the power to intimidate a whole planet.

When all is well (or at least mostly so) in our own corner of the world, we easily forget how fragile life is. Perhaps if more of us experienced what the 500,000 homeless persons in this country deal with on a daily basis, we’d be less likely to think of food and drink (and toilet paper!) as things we can expect always to have on hand. We know what the Bible has taught us about the frailty and impermanence of this life—“how fleeting life is” (Psalm 39:4)—but we easily get comfortable and complacent. We expect prosperity and plenty to continue routinely. We forget the Word’s warning: 

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.”  Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:13,14).

Now our routines and comfort level have been abruptly interrupted. So what hope do we have?  We need a bigger source of hope than a weekly paycheck. We need a bigger source of hope than a stable stock market portfolio. We need bigger hope than having health insurance and accident insurance and unemployment insurance and life insurance—all of which only insure financially, to a limited degree, against risks and losses in this life. Having health insurance doesn’t keep you healthy. Accident insurance doesn’t prevent accidents from happening. Unemployment insurance doesn’t guarantee jobs won’t be lost. Life insurance doesn’t keep people alive. 

We need a higher power. Our hope is in One who is bigger than earthly limits. David, poet and king of Israel (who knew firsthand about life’s ups and downs), wrote:

Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,
    but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God.
They will collapse and fall,
    but we shall rise and stand upright (Psalm 20:7,8). 

That doesn’t mean we get through this life unscathed. David’s own history was scarred by problems and losses (cf. 2 Samuel chapters 11-12 and 15-18, for example).  But hope in God’s presence with us continues even through the worst of times.  At another point in the history of God’s people, when a foreign invasion was looming and everything looked bleak, Habakkuk expressed the kind of hope we hope to have: 

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
    and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
    and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
    and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
    I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!  (Habakkuk 3:17-19)

It’s hard to be hopeful and rejoice when the shelves are bare, when employment ends, when infection and illness are spreading, when there is uncertainty everywhere around us.  But perhaps at such times we are made more ready to trust in God rather than just what this world has to offer. Christ’s apostle, Paul, urged us: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:19-20)—and that is what gives us hope. Peter echoed the same theme: “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3,4).  Life with God is not primarily about trusting in someone who can put bread on our tables (or onto store shelves).  Jesus invites us to trust him not because we have eaten our fill of bread or fish or other earthly things (cf. John 6:26). “Do not work for the food that perishes,” Jesus said, “but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27).

A friend of mine shared a bit of social media encouragement with me the other day.  It said, “Today I choose faith, trust, prayer, worship, hope and joy instead of worry.” Believers like David, Habbakuk, Peter and Paul offered similar sentiments.  Christ Jesus calls us to just such a hope.  Life is fragile, but our Savior handles our hearts with care—especially in life’s most challenging times.

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Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.