Courage in the Time of Coronavirus

“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” —Winston Churchill

A few weeks after the September 11th attack, I was in Washington for meetings at the Capitol. At the end of the day, I stepped out onto one of its ornate porticos to watch the sunset. The western sky was ablaze. It lit the Washington Monument like a candle and filled the Mall with golden light. Above me, the Capitol rotunda—this towering symbol of our republic—was grand and strong. It was also the intended target of the fourth plane on that terrible day in September.

I’ll never forget that as I gazed up at the rotunda in wonder and pride and relief that somehow, without warning, the words of Jesus echoed in my ears. They were words that caught His disciples off guard, too, as they pointed out the wonders of the Temple to their Master. He said, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). Suddenly all the strength of that great crown of Capitol Hill seemed to drain away. I remember a shiver came over me. It was early October, and the sun was down; so perhaps that explains it. But there was something about the pale marble that suddenly seemed vulnerable and strikingly fragile. The Capitol came so close to being a scene of blackened, tangled, death and destruction just like the one rescue workers were still picking through at Ground Zero in New York City. The difference between our majestic Capitol and a bomb crater was about twenty minutes and the courage of the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

The September 11th attack knocked us to our knees as a country. We got up and fought back, but the attack shook us and showed us how vulnerable we were and how fragile we are. While there are many differences between the crisis in 2001 and ours today, the same swiftness of change and the long-range impact on daily life will be felt for years to come.

Unlike the 9/11 attack, the coronavirus pandemic is truly global and the fear and sense of vulnerability far more pervasive, open-ended, and oppressive. The virus of fear has spread further and faster than the Wuhan version. Though fear is an amorphous thing, it has hard-edged consequences that everyone reading this has been impacted by in some way—closed borders, businesses, and schools, cancelled flights, quarantines, and a daily downpour of bad news from jobs lost to lives lost. There is a whole range of emotions that we are all grappling with in this current crisis: fear, anger, frustration, and a creeping sense that suddenly something has slipped from our hands that we may never have again. This is the first truly global pandemic that has come with a smartphone and its built-in engine for instant global communications—some of it helpful, some of it quite harmful, especially when media becomes a feed trough for fear.

Fear is contagious; but, thankfully, so is courage. Both are cultivated in the company we keep and the truths that dominate our thinking. For the Christian, the guardrails for our fear in any situation are God’s presence and His promises, which will never fail His people. Because of that, we are stronger than we think we are because Jesus, who is in us and with us and for us, is stronger even than death.

How do we fight the fear? How do we act with courage in this present crisis? In a thousand little ways—none of which will likely win a medal or make headlines but that will make a difference in people’s lives and in their view of our God. So let’s answer Cowper’s call to arms—“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take”—by remembering truths that defy the darkness, showing love to others, and giving glory to God.

Lose Your Life

Ironically, courage starts here. Jesus said, “Whoever would save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). You can eat healthy, exercise, wash your hands frequently, practice social distancing, look both ways before crossing a street, and any number of other prudent practices. But the one thing you can’t do is save your own life. You can’t keep it. You can only spend it—so spend it well for as long as God gives it.

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms,” G.K. Chesterton wrote. “It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ‘He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,’ is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It’s a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage… . A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.”

There is a long history of Christian courage during times of plagues and epidemics. In the middle of the 3rd century, Alexandria, Egypt, was struck with a horrific plague. Eusebius records that the pagans “thrust from them those that showed the symptoms of plague and fled from their nearest and dearest. They would throw them into the streets half dead, or cast out their corpses without burial.” Despite being a persecuted people, the Christians in the city cared for the sick and buried the dead—even at their own peril. Their courage was rooted in the grace and compassion of Christ and in the certain hope of the resurrection.

This is the same resurrection confidence that sustains Christians in every kind of danger. In one of her last letters home before being killed in an anti-Christian uprising in China, missionary Dr. Eleanor Chestnut wrote, “I don’t think we are in any danger, and if we are, we might as well die suddenly in God’s work as by some long, drawn-out illness at home.” Dr. Eleanor could write this because she had “lost” her life long before, when she believed on Jesus. In His sovereign, saving love she found unending life and joy that could not be taken away, not even by the hateful blows of her killers.

And so, in Christ there is freedom to live —freedom to act, freedom to risk, freedom to “desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.”

Love Your Neighbor

“Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). The lawyer’s question for Jesus was answered with an example of quiet, costly, compassionate courage from the least likely. A man lay on the side of the road to Jericho. Robbers had beaten and stripped him, leaving him half dead. He was a bloody mess. Two religious leaders—a priest and a Levite—passed by the dying man. When they saw him, perhaps they prayed a little prayer. Perhaps they scrolled Facebook to avoid eye contact or turned up their worship music a little louder as they hurried on. Wherever the priest and the Levite were going that day, they made it on time—punctual and presentable. But one man that day missed his appointments. He is called the “Good Samaritan,” although no Jew at the time would ever have thought to put those two words together. Samaritan’s were despised—and the feeling was mutual. Yet, it was a Samaritan who was a loving neighbor to a complete stranger.

I like to think I am the Samaritan in the story, but far too often I am the Levite instead—too busy to stop, too afraid to get involved, too hurried. But Covid-19 has forced us all to slow down, to slow way down. For someone whose life is built around motion, this is very frustrating for me. My calendar says that today I am to cross the border from Greece into North Macedonia and take the mountain pass to Skopje. Instead, the only thing I’ve crossed today is the street in front of my house. As hard as it is for me to adjust, in this sudden standstill I’ve found flashes of a silver lining in the smiles of my 94-year-old neighbor when I brought him meals and in the face of a friend who is in an heroic fight with cancer who needed groceries and coffee and conversation to break the weary hours.

This time of crisis presents many opportunities to show mercy and compassion and courage. There are rules to respect and good communication about what help is welcomed, but some people need a hug more than they need another health warning. The last time my 81-year-old mother-in-law was able to gather for worship at her church before the mandatory closures, she told a friend, a fellow octogenarian she knew was facing serious surgery that week, that she was praying for her. The friend replied to my mom-in-law, “I don’t care about coronavirus—I need a hug!” A big, comforting hug followed without hesitation.

My friend Rosaria Butterfield shared with me recently that after the President declared a State of Emergency over the pandemic, as schools and colleges were suddenly closing down, as fear was rising, and as her own heart was anxious for the needs of her husband and children, her church, and her neighbors, there was suddenly a knock at the door. She found two young women—strangers. Rosaria opened the door. They were weary travelers making an unexpected journey home from college months before they had planned to do so. They asked Rosaria, “What does Christian hospitality look like under Covid-19?” Rosaria’s husband Kent answered, “We aren’t sure yet. Are you feeling healthy? Would you like to join us for lunch? Or would you like us to give you food and water for the rest of your journey?”

What need, what opportunity will you see on the Jericho Road? It may be a stranded traveler, child care for kids suddenly out of school whose parents still have a job, or an older neighbor in need. Rosaria said, “Text frequently and pray daily for people whose health or age makes them most vulnerable both to Covid-19 and to gripping fear. Make their comfort your priority.”

Give An Answer

“But in your hearts revere Christ as LORD. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (I Peter 3:15).

This is a good time to speak of the hope that we have in Christ. This is why my friend (I’ll call him Sam) and his wife Leah with their children returned to China at the height of the coronavirus outbreak. It was a difficult, thought-out, prayed-out decision. At a time when most everyone who could get out of China were doing just that—and for good reason—Sam and Leah made a different decision. In the midst of rampant fear, they could show and tell their Chinese neighbors and colleagues that there is living, lasting hope in Jesus. It was also important to demonstrate this truth to their Chinese brothers and sisters as they stood and served shoulder-to-shoulder with them in this crisis. Sam, in his last message to me before flying back into China, told of how the Scripture had shaped their decision. He said:

II Timothy chapter 1 has really come into my mind several times, especially that call to gather with His people to fan into flame the gift of God, because He “has not given us the spirit of fear and timidity but of power, love, and self-control.” Paul goes on to say the way you fan into flame the gift of God is by sharing in suffering for the Gospel by the power of God.

Sam went on to describe an obscure Christian in that chapter named Onesiphorus, whose courageous act was simply to be there for Paul the prisoner, and then Sam said,

When everyone abandoned Paul, Onesiphorus was the guy who was not ashamed of his chains and stood with him and sought him out and refreshed him. Even though we will be locked in our house for at least a period of time—and maybe more than that 14-day quarantine—we feel like this is a really important time to be standing with our Chinese brothers and sisters and to be living out what we believe Luke 12 says—that there is something much worse than the coronavirus and that there’s something much better than health. So we really feel the step of faith God is calling us to is to go back. We don’t feel we can go back to the States in faith. Yes, it would be a step of protection of ourselves, but we don’t see anything in the Scripture that is calling us to move that direction of self-preservation. There is something much better to risk for.

My friend is another Onesiphorus. He and his family’s step of faith and love and risk has strengthened my own heart during these daunting days—because courage, too, is contagious. “Dear Jesus, our brave Captain, please speak through your people and act through your people, even as you steady our fearful hearts by your presence. Give us work to do. Raise up an army of Onesiphoruses, who will reflect the power of your rising in this present darkness. Amen.”

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JOURNEY © 2020 by Tim Keesee

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