Some Thoughts After Recovering From Covid

My main thought after being really sick with Covid is this:

We’ve all been played.

What I mean is that the Apostle Paul is right: there is more going on than meets the eye—“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

See, we have allowed ourselves to view this whole thing in our neat categories—red vs. blue, Republican vs. Democrat, etc.—but life resists neat categorization. Who would have predicted that Sweden—of all places—would have a different pandemic response than its Scandinavian neighbors? You certainly cannot claim that the Swedes are concerned with American electoral politics.

The point is that we’ve all been played, i.e., we’ve allowed ourselves to be dragged out into a spiritual rip tide, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to drown.

We have allowed this nasty virus to give us more excuses to hate one another. We’ve all been played.

The good news is that God has other plans for us, and if we are aware of what’s happening not only can we avoid the dangers of self-righteous outrage and self-justified hatred, we can actually breathe out *love* wherever we go. Because the dark powers aren’t going to win anyway.

—Andrew Forrest

Scripture:

Ecclesiastes 9:11
Ephesians 6:10-12