Now that's essential

And as destruction from the Almighty it shall come (Joel 1:15)
I've been pondering the idea of 'essential' today. My son has been self isolating at his house in Bath with one other friend. This friend's parents are collecting him to take him home leaving us with a choice: do we leave our son to live alone in an empty city or do we drive over and pick him up? Considering the risks the answer was pretty clear. Any young man left alone to 'social distance' far from home is at risks greater even than the plague. So with some expectation I may be judged by others and found wanting, I went over to pick him up.
It does beg a question: what, or more important,  who counts as essential in this crisis? NHS staff, delivery drivers, shelf stackers, cleaners, food preparers, crop harvesters, warehouse workers, carers of every kind. This could equally be a list of those in underpaid and insecure employment.
Now, as I've said before, I am as sure as I can be that this virus is not a judgement from the Almighty. God didn't look at our corrupt lifestyle and quietly plan to wipe out the elderly and vulnerable. Even if you take the worst of the Old Testament destructions as genuinely attributable to God's edicts or actions then, even then, this is far from any God of the Scriptures. And if like me you read such texts with some care then a God who loves his enemies so much he is prepared to die for them could never act in this way.
But it might come to us as judgement. It might seem to be like a judgement from the ruler of the world. And, in at least one way, it does. All those whom we have taken for granted, whom we have paid poorly and valued little,  we now know are essential to our future existence as a society.
They always were but we somehow forgot. Is there any way we can do even more than clap the NHS? Can we not cheer the essential worker? And when we're done, when we have time to breathe again maybe we can call for a change to our treatment of them. Have an essential workers' tax premium, an automatic 10% off VAT. I don't know but I do know that this has come as a judgement on how the  most vital in our society have been treated.

The walkway to Chesil beach near Abbotsbury

Comments

  1. Julie S6 April 2020 at 18:49

    I was wondering about this very thought at the weekend. We are pretty awful at caring for God's creation - including each other. Maybe his heart has broken too many times.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julie S6 April 2020 at 18:53

    Also, I think collecting your son from Bath was an essential journey.

    ReplyDelete

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