The phrase “Lent in the Time of Coronavirus” has been hanging in my mind for the past week or so.

Not that I’ve ever read Love in the Time of Cholera. But watching this pandemic unfold has been the perfect Lenten experience. Seeing the exponential spread provide mounting evidence that “official cases” are only the tip of the iceberg. Feeling the uncertainty of everything but our limits, our ignorance, our powerlessness — our mortality. It’s comforting because only in confronting these limits can we truly experience the loving sovereignty of God.

InThe Mortification of Sin, the Puritan John Owen says that “He will.. not suffer your nakedness to be covered with fig leaves, but take them away and all the peace you have in them, and will not suffer you to settle on such lees.” (Side note: “lees” is another word for “dregs” — the sediment of wine in the bottom of the barrel.) In other words - our “fig leaves” (or masks!) of wealth, health, comfort, convenience, distance from suffering — are “rubbish” compared to knowing Jesus.

He wants us to hear His assurance that “when the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars” - Ps 75:3 ESV.

Paradoxically, although we are all talking about “social distancing” now, we are all in this together. We are all going to be suffering. We can’t distance from it. And the good news- the Gospel! - is that instead of distancing Himself from us, our God in His compassionate love has chosen to draw near, chase us down, become one of us, and literally take on our suffering.

This is what Lent is about: the opportunity to join in His suffering and death, and ultimately in His resurrection. Dying to our fig leaves and false comforts. Finding life right now with Him at our side, dwelling in our midst. And making our own dwelling in Him. Even in the time of coronavirus.

PS A bit more on Love in the Time of Cholera. Apparently the Spanish for “cholera” can also mean “passion”, so that title has a play on words. And off we go with word associations: “passion” (as in “The Passion”) also means suffering…