Message from Tim

On our knees?

Has coronavirus brought the UK to its knees? There is a sense in which it has, a sense in which it has not, and a sense in which it should. It’s a matter of definition. When we talk of organisations being brought to their knees, we mean that they have been so badly affected by something that they can no longer function effectively, and in that derivative sense, perhaps we may feel as if the country has indeed been brought to its knees. With the most recent lockdown, almost everything has ground to a halt. The government has even closed schools, except to vulnerable children and the children of essential workers, and this was done with the utmost reluctance, since keeping the schools open was like holding up a banner to proclaim that it was ‘business as usual’ in the UK. But schools and many businesses are closed with unimaginable economic and social consequences for the future; we have a spiralling death toll, massive pressures on the NHS, and a government that sometimes looks way out of its depth: in the light of all this, it is hard to avoid the feeling that we have been brought to our knees.

However, bringing someone to their knees originally meant bringing them into subjection: the act of kneeling was a visible expression of subservience and surrender to a powerful adversary. Clearly that is not the case. We have not given up and turned our face to the wall, nor should we. The development of a range of vaccines is giving the nation hope and people have shown extraordinary resilience while riding the emotional roller coaster of the last ten months. We have not been defeated or destroyed by this; we are finding the strength and resources and determination to carry on and see this through to the end.

But if we have not been brought to our knees in defeat, we have not been brought to our knees in prayer either. In a largely secular society it is perhaps no surprise that most people are pinning their hopes on the vaccine rather than on God. Could the vaccine even be ‘salvation for humanity’, as the Prime Minister suggested back in November? That feels a bit to me as if he is poaching our language, but it’s clear that we do need saving from this virus, and the vaccine might just do it, and if it does, then that is testimony to human ingenuity and resourcefulness – we can feel as if we are still in control of our own destiny!

Yet the virus is not the only thing from which we will need salvation in these coming months, and those of us who know that salvation in its fullest sense comes from Jesus should be on our knees to pray for those who don’t. Kneeling to pray is not a sign of weakness, but a source of strength. Daniel found courage to go into the lions’ den when he knelt to pray three times a day in defiance of the king’s edict (Daniel 6:11), and St. Paul knelt to pray that the Christians in Ephesus would be strengthened with power through God’s Spirit in their inner being (Ephesians 3:14-16). So on our knees before God we can pray that this virus would not bring us to our knees in any other way.

Some of us will be unsure of how to pray in response to this pandemic because our sense of divine providence is tempered by a scientific understanding of how the virus works. However, even the most hardened scientist among us might be able to identify with words spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury when Britain was called to observe the ‘fourth in a series’ of wartime national days of prayer (The National Day of Prayer. Nature 147, 322 (1941)). Dr. Lang spoke of how the country was ‘approaching or entering a critical stage in the tremendous struggle,’ and of how it should ‘renew the acknowledgement of its need of God and dependence on Him’, praying for ‘His forgiveness of all that has been amiss in our national life, for strength and guidance in the stern and testing days which may be coming, and, if it be His will, for good success.’ Amen to that!