On Stage Now: "Coronavirus 2020"

I've come to believe that crises, like this Coronavirus experience, make good people better and bad people worse.

It is encouraging to hear stories about people sacrificing their routines, coming to the aid of a neighbor in need, or continuing to do jobs that carry a risk of contracting the disease,

Good people go out of their way to bring peace to the anxious, food to the hungry, money to the no- longer employed! The intervention of the many Good Samaritans out there makes tolerable the loneliness, anxiety, and fears that inevitably steal into the hearts of all who suffer through these trying times.

Bad people double their efforts to be self-centered and manipulative, hoarding foods or paper products, or scamming people with deceptive phone calls claiming to be from Medicare or from a medical service providing coronavirus testing.
                                               
Assessing this pandemic from my religious perspective I have to ask, "What is God trying to tell us?
What questions should we be asking ourselves? What lesson am I to learn?"

The answers may be applicable to the behaviors of the world at large, or to any given nation or political party. Above all, the answers must be personal to each individual human being! Each of us has the opportunity (responsibility) to pause, to think, to listen to conscience and the insights of ethics and morality.
                                         
Over the years I have developed for myself a fundamental principle from study of the Bible, from reading biographies, from personal experience: "God often directs us in indirect ways."

I think of God as a movie director watching the unfolding of each scene of our lives. He seldom tells us how we are to act, but more often subtly coaches from us a performance based on our own unique combination of talents.

I am not fond of this script, this "Coronavirus 2020," but I suspect the Director is watching carefully how each of us plays the role he or she has been given, trusting we will use our talents to bring this production to a happy ending.

And as is always true, God waits to see whether the bad people, the villains, will have that epiphany moment which brings about conversion. Bad people can become good. That possibility adds to the drama, and may be the raison d'etre for the entire production.

The plays the thing wherein the Divine One catches his actors. He has given the general description of the story, but allows the actors to contribute in their own way.

And still He directs in indirect ways.