THINGS THAT
NEVER CHA Perilous times
In 2 Timothy 3:1 the apostle Paul warns us about the end of the age. He refers to those days as “perilous times,” or—as the margin in the New King James Version notes—“times
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DISCERN
of stress.” After introducing this term, Paul describes personal conduct and habits as being signs of those days. World disasters, pandemics and wars are prophesied to come, but in this epistle, Paul talks about people being “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good” (verses 2-3). These types of attitudes and actions lead to a fractured society that focuses attention on the self, rather than what is best for the whole.
Unprecedented pandemic restrictions
Since that March date when the pandemic exploded on the scene, the world has experienced month after month of fear, death, anxiety, pain, suffering and altered lives. For the first time in my lifetime, governments in many countries imposed various restrictions, such as shutting down all businesses except those considered essential, stopping in-person schooling in favor of online learning, making mask-wearing mandatory under threat of fines, and telling citizens when they could leave their homes and when they could not. No one was prepared for anything like this.
January/February 2022
Photo: iStockphoto.com
O
n Friday, March 13, 2020, along with most U.S. churches, the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, canceled all in-person church services. Little did we know this would last for the next 14 weeks. This was unprecedented! To my knowledge, church services had never been canceled across the board in the United States—not during world wars or even the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1920. But this took place not only in the United States. More than 100 countries around the world took the same action in the weeks that followed. Even today, some countries still prohibit groups from gathering for a religious service.
The COVID-19 pandemic and human responses to it have turned the world upside down. When it seems everything is changing, what can we count on to never change?
