Despite the complications and disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are thankful for God’s protection as we continue to pray for Alliance workers, laypeople, and those throughout the world who may find themselves vulnerable to exposure as the virus leaps borders and keeps researchers scrambling to understand its transmission, incubation, prevention, and treatment.
When unforeseen outbreaks like this suddenly materialize, it can be easy for us Christ followers to lose our bearings and get knocked off course. In our mortal drive for self-preservation, we often assess the potential risks to ourselves and our loved ones and take protective action. Swimming against the stream, however, the Holy Spirit gently directs our eyes and hearts back toward those at much greater risk who lack access to critically needed physical, emotional, and spiritual care.
Church history reminds us of the countercultural posture of our spiritual ancestors during times of great affliction. In 252 A.D., a devastating plague hit the ancient North African coastal city of Carthage. Healthy people fled in droves, leaving everything behind. In response, Carthaginian Bishop Cyprian drew all the Christians into the center of the very city where they had been persecuted and told them,
“If we’re going to do what Jesus did, so that through His poverty we might become rich, I call you to give personal and financial aid, care, and comfort to all according to their need, not their faith.”
This unconventional posture clearly differentiated these early Christians from the society that surrounded them and contributed significantly to the perpetuation of the Christian faith.
About a century and a half later, the ancient Mediterranean city of Caesarea had already been suffering the effects of famine and war when the plague struck. As citizens began fleeing the city, one group determined to remain: the Christians. As Bishop Eusebius reported,
“All day long [the Christians] tended to the dying and to their burial, countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all.”
Eusebius goes on to state that because of their compassion in the midst of the plague, the Christians’ “deeds were on everyone’s lips, and they glorified the God of the Christians.”
More recently, in April 2015, Rev. Moise Mamy and several others from the Eau de Vie Ebola awareness team, a ministry started by CAMA in Guinea, entered a number of villages in the southern part of the country, which was a hotbed for the deadly Ebola virus. Armed with bleach and other means to prevent the spread of the disease, the team sought to educate villagers on the dangers of Ebola and how to lower their risk of contracting it.
But when the team entered the village of Womey, the villagers attacked and killed Moise and seven others who had come to help them avoid infection. “Many places accepted their teaching,” wrote Jon Erickson, an Alliance international worker and colleague of Moise’s, “but some villagers had heard a rumor that the [bleach they were distributing], which kills the Ebola virus, was actually the virus itself.”
In addition to being executive secretary of Eau de Vie and cofounder of Guinea’s Hope Clinic, Moise was a fervent evangelist and the beloved superintendent of the Alliance church of the Mano, his people group. He delighted in radiating his Savior’s love by preaching the good news and caring for the weak, vulnerable, and afflicted.
Although history may not regard the coronavirus as the plague of the twenty-first century, it still presents opportunity for Christ’s Church to radiate His love to the overlooked and underserved. In his recent Christianity Today article, Stephen Ko, an Alliance pastor in Chinatown and former CDC medical officer, considers the outbreak’s real threat to churches: withdrawing from their communities. “How could we say we loved our neighbors yet consider shutting our doors in their time of greatest need?” he asks. “If we believed in a Savior who healed the sick, bestowed sight to the blind, and touched lepers, why did we doubt his power to reign over this coronavirus?”