Stay safe- the Lord is watching over you and the vaccines He has provided will keep us all safe in the days to come.

I've heard some Christians say they don't need a vaccination because the Lord will protect them. I say the Lord is protecting us by giving us the vaccines we have developed. After all, everything is subject to God's will. He chose to allow us to successfully develop vaccines to keep His people safe. We should gratefully accept the gift we have been given by Him.

As the Bible says in Jeremiah 1:5:

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
New Revised Standard Version.

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."
King James version.

This is an interesting paragraph from the Bible. It is the passage often quoted from the Bible in opposition to a women's right to choose. As an aside, nothing in the Bible prohibits abortion and those pro-lifers who say it does are reading something into the Bible which simply isn't there. It's what they want it to mean, not what it says. For the record, if God wants a particular fetus to survive, He'll create the conditions necessary to achieve that result - whether it be to touch the prospective mother's heart, or provide her with the resources she needs to bear that child. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

In fact, much of what I learned from being a Christian, letting Christ speak to my heart, and studying the Bible is heresy to most Christians. For one thing, the Bible is not supposed to be taken as literal truth. It exists to open peoples' hearts to God's love which is the basic motivating force of the universe. The creation myths in Genesis were created by the Jews to explain and give meaning to their existence based on their world-view and knowledge base at that time. It was not meant to hamstring their descendants thousands of years later.

God gave us all our faculties - including our rational minds and the ability to figure things out. God didn't wave a magic wand and in 6 days create everything. Whether the Big Bang is the correct explanation for the origin of the universe is irrelevant. But the ability (to try to figure out how God created the universe and all the other mysteries which permeate our lives) is what God gave us and intended us to use to solve the puzzle which is our existence.

It makes much more sense to accept that God created a complete unified system based on evolution which He intended that we figure out and make use of, than to subscribe to Intelligent Design as the basis of the universe. It's an insult to God to believe He would create an illogical, irrational system we are expected to accept on faith contrary to the rational thought processes He provided us with.

Getting back to the Bible quote, I believe it is meant to show that God is the architect behind everything. He knew we would one day face this pandemic. He did not intend that we sit back and declare "God will protect me." He intended us to come together and use the tools He gave us to solve the problem we are facing.

I am currently reading a book titled "An Elegant Defense," by Matt Richtel. The current vaccines may have only taken months to develop, but they are based on decades of research and development - further proof that God plants the seeds of future actions in our hearts long before we are aware of the need for them. God gave each of those scientists the knowledge, opportunity and motivation to make the necessary discoveries about our immune system which would form the basis for creating the current vaccines in less than a year. If any one of those previous discoveries had not been made, we would not have been able to create the miraculous vaccines which are now being distributed.

I suggest that anyone who wants a better, more in-depth understanding of the humane immune system (how it works, how it developed, and how people learned how to manipulate it for our collective good) read the previously cited book, "An Elegant Defense." You'll be glad you did.

In Christ,

Harian