James B. Stewart of the New York times wrote on Twitter on Friday, March 27, “After 4 stock market crashes, I thought I was ready for anything. Then came the virus. I became a disciplined investor over 40 years. The virus broke me in forty days.” Possibly looking forward to retirement soon, Stewart will most likely not have the nest egg that he thought he had so carefully constructed over 40 years.
Cecil Morgan (not his real name) is the son of friends of my family. He was looking forward to his 40th birthday. He had a new apartment, a new job, and he wanted to celebrate his birthday in lavish style – out-of-town guests, a yacht – “you know, the whole Miami thing,” he tells a local newspaper. Then COVID-19 hit. “Suddenly, the club was shut down,” he said. “I wasn’t making any money, and I couldn’t pay my rent.” He had no choice but to return to his parents’ home in North Carolina.
Arguably, the most important lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that nothing that is built by human beings is absolutely safe. Nothing built by man has a solid foundation, as has seen in the collapse of multiple institutions and businesses in the last four months. Since the start of the pandemic and its devastating impact on educational institutions, the airline industry, tourism, the rental car business, just to name a few, the words of Hebrews 11: 9-10 have become something of an inspiration spring, from which I drink daily: “By faith he (Abraham) dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
Abraham had possibly lived a nomadic life back in the land of Hur. So, when God called him to leave his home and travel to a land that he would show him, that was not counter-intuitive to him. This was like telling a mountain climber that you would have an amazing prize for her if she climbed Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada.
At God’s leading, Abraham found himself in Palestine, and as was his tradition, he lived in tents there. But as he advanced in years and experience, perhaps he desired something much more secure than his nomadic life and began to understand even more clearly that his ultimate destiny was not Palestine, but heaven. So, “he looked for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
Of course, city is used in Hebrews 11 as a symbol of permanence and the life to come. Abraham looked forward to a life that was permanent and rooted in God. But the good news is that we can have that permanence and solid foundation here and now. Architects will tell you that the foundation of a building serves three important purposes. It supports the weight of the building. It keeps the building standing against the powerful forces of nature. It keeps the ground moisture from seeping in and weakening the structure.
The foundation of a building is the most important part of the building but it is also the least attractive part of the building. In fact, the foundation of a building is hardly ever seen, but it is always there! The lesson for us here is that God is the most important part of our building. We cannot see Him, but He is always there as a solid foundation, to bear the weight of our burdens, our disappointments and our despair. He is always there to keep us standing against all that the world hurls at us. From what we have observed in recent times, all that we have or think we have could be lost in the space of a week, a month, a year, but when God is our foundation, we will never lose anything of real worth.