COVID-19 Novel Encouragement Sample

Restricted Freedom or Joyful Humility?

Can restrictions and limits coexist with love and freedom? Or are they wholly opposed to one another?

I've heard and felt so much frustration and weariness recently. "I want to be free to go out." "It seems so unfair that some can't even visit a friend in the same dorm!" Some are even separated from their roommates. "It's so hard!" "The regulations are impersonal; they don't understand my unique situation."

How deeply am I willing to love others? How much am I willing to sacrifice on their behalf? Let me pause in my reaction and look at Jesus.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.  In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:1-11)

Jesus had the power of the Creator but because of love stepped into restrictions and limits.

Put another way, Jesus limited his freedom and power in order to love.

There is no one more powerful than God. And no one has given up more than God in heaven to become a baby – a helpless, crying, pooing, gurgling newborn. To grow up and be nailed on a cross, experiencing its suffocating excruciation until he gave up the life he had the power to create in the first place.

To follow Jesus is to be called to be like him in humility. To remember what has been done by this humble God-king. And to love others the way he does, just as Paul called the Philippian church to do.

How deeply am I willing to love others?

Around us is a community-based cultural framework, focused on the whole. But do you, like me, feel strongly the sense of 'my individual restriction'? In my cultural bias to individualism am I overlooking the protection of the person I do not see and will never know? To care for the whole group might just benefit the largest number of individuals.

Many families in this society rely on grandparents' assistance with children. Is it possible that the epidemic here could impact family units in a more devastating way than I can understand with my limited foreign understanding? For the sake of the grandmother in another complex who I've never met and who is related to the checkout lady in the supermarket, I will give up my freedom gladly. I will joyfully embrace the restriction of my personal freedom by wearing a mask and gloves, sanitizing my hands, or even choosing to buy online instead of going to the shop.

Who will you gladly give up your freedom for?

Maybe my struggle to love is internal. I'm stuck indoors and there is no one to witness my giving up of freedom. I don't feel I have freedom in my four walls. Can I ask God to simply grow me in humility like the Lord Jesus even when no-one else can see?

Is there also a visible, public way? How can I honor those who are 'imposing' the restrictions on me?

All the local families and teachers in my Wechat groups are treating this all very seriously. It's their role, as much as the frontline doctors, to enable the country to get back on its feet. The whole community is self-regulating.

How I can serve others rather than protest about the constraints? Can I step back from frustration and see a nation struggling in great stress under the watchful and critical eye of the world? Can I slow down to understand the fears and sensitive points? Jesus' humility helps me question myself and listen more. It increases my compassion for those who are afraid of the virus and afraid of their responsibility to protect communities from it. Do I dare to ask Jesus to help me focus less on what I can't do, and focus more on who I can love?

How I can love the teachers, security guards, employers and others whose responsibility is to enforce the regulations? Maybe it's to respect and honor them as they do their job. Maybe it's to pray for them whether they ever know it or not. Maybe, if I do these things, I may even also exalt Christ in a public way. For that is what results from Christ's humbling of himself. His public exultation on a global scale. More widespread than even COVID-19.

With the limits and restrictions, how can I exalt Jesus in my invisible attitudes and my outward actions? And in my reduced freedom, who am I willing to love? 

Prayer: Forgive me, Lord, for my self-centeredness! I turn away from it and look to you and what you have done for me. Thank you for loving me enough to give up heaven for me! I want to love others like that.

By Jane, Beijing