Some good news

You know the nightmare scenarios I’ve been telling you about? If we treat this like the seasonal flu we could get over 800,000 dead people. Well, here is good news.

We are not going to get the nightmare scenarios. Why?

It is not that the modeling was wrong. Actually, the modeling has been fairly accurate. The modeling is precisely why Governor Kemp has not locked down all of Georgia, for example. The modeling, it turns out, has been right.

That includes all the modeling — including the part that showed if we changed our behavior we could avoid the nightmare scenarios.

Because you and I have changed our behaviors, we are seeing good news in the data. There is still a lot to be troubled by and there are still shortages and problems ahead. But for most of the country, we are turning the corner. It’s going to take a bit longer to see for sure, but the data is really encouraging.

Someone suggested this is like Y2K, which everyone jokes about as no big deal and a “nothingburger.” The reality is that Y2K was a very big deal and people busted their rear ends to fix all the problems before the world moved over into the year 2000.

As a result, we can all joke about Y2K being no big deal because we never saw the engineers and computer programmers sweating it out behind the scenes.

Go to a local hospital and you can see just how big a deal this virus is. But otherwise, you have mostly full grocery stores, no gas lines, fast food drive thrus, and zoom video conferences to keep you occupied.

We will get through this.

Let me tell you some more good news.

Easter is coming. We may not be able to be in a church that Sunday. But Jesus conquered death.

Even secular historians will put Easter Weekend as one of the, if not the, most important moments in human history. A man named Jesus was savagely beaten, tortured, nailed to a cross, killed, buried, and rose again from the dead.

He died that though our bodies may die, we get to live eternally with the God of all creation. All we need to do is repent and embrace Him as our Lord.

So many people have been so focused on pandemic and plague, we have lost focus on God’s sovereignty. He is still on the throne. He is in charge. He will pull good from the plague and be glorified in all things, which He will make new.

Easter is coming. Put your trust in Jesus, not experts, politicians, or random writers on the internet. We will all disappoint because we are all sinners. He will never disappoint.

There are those who will read this and wonder how it can be. How could a loving God allow so much death, plague, pestilence, and violence on the world?

The world is full of sin, though. The sins of man polluted the world. What God made perfect, he allowed us to corrupt and He will fix. This is all part of the Easter message.

God did not give himself a pass on this. God became flesh. He lived as we live, but lived at a time of even less luxury. The poorest American today is richer than the Son of Man’s human family ever was. He grew up in wisdom and understanding in a fallen world, though wholly innocent was executed with the world’s sins piled on top of Him, and He conquered that death.

You cannot escape the misery of this planet. Neither did God. He allowed Himself to be tempted, tried, executed, and then died. But He conquered it all that you and I might live.

Focus on the cross and an empty tomb. Easter is coming. Rejoice.