God’s Got Your Back!
In my last blog, I stated that my wife and I are opposites in personality. She’s a bottom-line person — down-to-earth, matter-of-fact, practical, pragmatic, realistic. I’m the opposite. On our sea-side honeymoon I was excited that the full moon was going to be rising over the ocean, so I took Mimi out to the beach after dinner. We stood and watched for about two seconds. In those two seconds I learned for the first time that some people are moon people and some are not. I’m the romantic. Since that moment we have increasingly grown to realize the blessing (and the bane — which we’ve learned to celebrate with great hilarity) of being opposites. (Welcome to marriage!) We’ve long recognized that in almost all of our life together Mimi takes care of the ground and I take care of the sky.
In that previous blog, I referred to Mimi quoting the bottom-line passages found in Psalm 90 about the expiration dates our Maker has programmed for our lives. Then I went on to say more about those final things I, out of character, being down-to-earth, practical, and realistic — more like Mimi than like me. “Well and good” Mimi said, about what I wrote, but reminded me that Psalm 91 comes after Psalm 90. She said she’s found herself having to read Psalm 91 at least twice a day now to keep her composure during this horrible COVID-19 pandemic.
Instantly there popped into my mind a pandemic story I’ve never forgotten. In 1854 a world-wide cholera pandemic spread rapidly throughout Indonesia, Asia, and Europe; coming most fiercely to London, and particularly to the district of Charles H. Spurgeon — arguably the most celebrated European preacher, ever. The 20,000 seat music hall where his church met was packed solid nearly every Sunday to hear him speak. But Spurgeon was also a pastor — a caring pastor for his huge flock. Here are his words in his remembering that pandemic:
“Family after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost every day I was called to visit [a family where a loved one had died]. At first I gave myself up with youthful ardour to the visitation of the sick, and was sent for from all corners of the district by persons of all ranks and religions, but soon I became weary in body, and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me. A little more work and weeping would have laid me low among the rest; I felt that my burden was heavier than I could bear, and was ready to sink in despair.”
Spurgeon then recalls that when returning “mournfully home” after presiding at a funeral his curiosity led him to come closer and read the handwritten words in the center of a large poster in the window of a shoe shop. What he read was a game-changer. He said, “The effect upon my heart was immediate…. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying, in calm and peaceful spirit; I felt no fear of evil, and I suffered no harm.”
Many years later the owner of that shoe store revealed his part in that story in a pamphlet that he entitled “The Best Refuge in Times of Trouble.” He said he was troubled by the cholera endemic posters “at every turning… calculated to terrify the people.” So he obtained one of those posters and fixed it to the window of his store after he had written in the center of it these words: Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
Those words came from Psalm 91, verses 9 and 10 (King James Version). The entire Psalm is worth reading often these days, as Mimi has found — and me too. And you will find, as you read, there’s a clear promise in more places than one that “If you make the Most High your dwelling” (New International Version) that no matter what, God’s got your back!
