Pretty much in the middle of 4 chapters full of a whole bunch of red words, there’s a parable that has always caught my attention. Modern translations of the Bible call it the “Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids” but I grew up knowing it as the “Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.”

Besides having a pretty intriguing title (take note, communicators – catchy titles are a great hook!), there’s a very simple point that a lot of the world is learning right now: the middle of a crisis is the worst time to prepare for a crisis. Actually, it’s impossible. All you can do in a crisis is respond to the crisis. The crisis doesn’t prepare you; the crisis reveals whether or not you’re prepared.

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I recognize that all we can really do with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic at this point is hunker down and ride it out. We can shelter in place and practice physical distancing (Stop practicing social distancing! We need each other now more than ever!). We can wash our hands while reciting The Lord’s Prayer. We can do all the things our grandmas taught us to do that will help us avoid the worst of the outbreak. But what can we do now in order to be ready for the next crisis? I’m glad you asked. I can think of at least 3 things.

Make regular deposits so you can afford irregular withdrawals.

This first thought applies to so many different areas, but let’s apply it in two: savings and relationships. If there’s ever been a time to have an emergency fund or a rainy day fund, it’s now. With all the uncertainty in the workplace, who knows when they might show up to a job that they no longer have? No more job, no more paycheck. No more paycheck, no more money to pay for the food and the bills and all the expenses that the virus didn’t stop. But if you had been able to take a portion of your income – even a small portion – and put it away on a regular basis, you’d be able to approach that scenario a little differently.

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What about in our relationships? If you’re currently in quarantine with relatives with whom you don’t get along, you’re already overdrawn on your grace account. But what if you had made small deposits of grace and patience and kindness every day along the way? You’d have a large amount of those to get you through the next few weeks while those qualities are at a premium.

Do every day what you would do on your last day.

Have you ever been asked what you would do differently if today was your last day to live? Did that question send your mind racing as you tried to think of all the people you’d like to say “I love you” to or “Please forgive me” to? Of course, it did. But wouldn’t it be great if our last day didn’t need to be drastically different than any other day? If we valued the people we loved the most, maintained an intimate connection with our Lord, and lived without bitterness and unforgiveness in our hearts? If we did that, then we could live our last day like it was every day. Imagine the peace we’d all be able to live with even if some of those days brought unprecedented realities.

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Practice contentment and you’ll be prepared for chaos.

I don’t want to even hint at the return of Jesus as chaos, but if you go back to that parable I mentioned at the beginning, you’ll find that it absolutely was for 5 of those virgins. Why? They simply weren’t prepared because they didn’t have enough oil to keep their lamps lit. People who aren’t content never seem to have enough, do they? In fact, if you asked them how much more they’d need to feel secure, they’d all say the same thing: a little more.

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But when we practice a lifestyle of contentment, we can live in peace about the unknowns simply because we’ve prepared for it. The 5 wise virgins didn’t have some kind of insider knowledge about when the groom was coming, but they did know what they’d need to have in order to be ready and so they never used up all their oil.

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Quite honestly, a lot of people are scrambling to find any kind of hope right now because the crisis we’re facing has revealed that they trusted in all the wrong things. But the good news is that, unlike for the foolish virgins, there’s still time to invest in the one relationship that can hold you through the worst storms.

Money isn’t it. Neither is a pill. You don’t need to unwind with a glass or a shot. What you need is a Who, and Jesus is His name.

Now would be an excellent time for you to meet Him for the first time or to reestablish the most valuable relationship you’ve got.

I remember once when I was driving through the mountains between North Carolina and Tennessee and it was getting late. I don’t know exactly what happened, but at some point, my sister – who was in the backseat – jumped halfway into the front seat while reaching for the steering wheel and simultaneously screaming, “Paul, wake up!”

It almost killed us because I wasn’t asleep and my reaction to her reaction caused me to jerk the wheel when I didn’t need to.

It was one of the most terrifying 3 seconds of our lives and we still can’t agree about what actually happened. She swears she saw my eyes closed in the rear-view mirror and I’m positive that she just happened to look in the mirror while I was blinking. Since this is my blog, we’ll go with my side of the story.

The one thing that I do know is that what happened in the car that night was a lot like what happened in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. You can find it in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, but let me recap it for you like this: Jesus was ACTUALLY asleep in the middle of a storm and the disciples reached for Him yelling, “Jesus, wake up!!” The biggest difference between my sister in the car and the disciples in the boat is that they didn’t think Jesus was asleep; the knew He was.

Fast forward to the end of the story and we find Jesus saying something that we might not have expected. Instead of telling them they did the right thing in coming to Him about the storm, He basically rebuked them for waking Him up.

He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

(Matthew 8:26)

I think we can learn 3 things from the way Jesus challenged His disciples in that boat.

If Jesus is sleeping, we don’t need to be scrambling.

Jesus wasn’t sleeping on the job. His disciples thought that He was asleep because He didn’t know what was happening, but Jesus was asleep because He was in control of what was happening. He rebuked the disciples because they missed the obvious: what we do in a storm should match what God does in a storm, and God never panics in a storm.

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What’s in us should affect what’s around us.

1 John 4:4 tells us that we’ve overcome because we’re God’s children and because the one in us is greater than the one who is in the world. In short, what we carry inside us should impact what’s carrying on around us more than the other way around. You and I are called to be thermostats more than thermometers. We set the temperature instead of reflecting it.

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Instead of rocking the boat, remember who’s in the boat.

At the end of the day, we may find ourselves a little more like the disciples than we want to be. I think that right now a lot of us may even feel like my sister when it comes to the coronavirus, the spread of it, and the effect of it on world markets. From our perspective, it can seem like God’s asleep at the wheel and that can lead to a bunch of us reaching for the wheel and screaming at God to wake up.

But the most critical lesson that the disciples learned in the boat that day was that Jesus was in the boat with them. It’s amazing how quickly a storm can take our eyes off of what matters the most, isn’t it? We see the waves, we feel the wind and the rain, we check the stock market or the number of COVID-19 cases on the trackers and we begin to fear all that we might lose instead of remembering what can never be taken from us.

Jesus is still in the boat. He hasn’t left and He isn’t going to.

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

(Hebrews 13:5)

He didn’t beat the disciples up that day and He isn’t beating us up today. But He is reminding all of us that He is here. He’s present in the problem and His presence is the solution.

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Jesus has such a way of revealing our lack of faith without shaming us for our lack of faith, doesn’t He? The end result of the boat story wasn’t the disciples hanging their heads about themselves, but increasing their faith in Him.

They also made it through the storm. So will we.

I had something else planned for the blog this week, but it’ll have to wait until sometime later. When a little bug can cripple the world’s economy, cancel professional sports and even March Madness, it demands a response. Here’s mine.

The COVID-19 coronavirus is real and so is the pandemic that is growing as a result. People who were already at risk due to other health conditions are being pushed into eternity as a result of it, and we should take seriously the warnings and the wisdom given to us by experts.

But as followers of Jesus, we can’t allow a pandemic to lead us into pandemonium, and yet it seems that this is exactly what is happening! I don’t say this because churches are canceling normal worship services – there may very well be wisdom in doing that and our church may end up doing the same (although we’re ON for this Sunday, March 15).

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The question is what will we do instead? Hide away in our homes? Practice social distancing from the very people who need us to draw near? Bubble wrap our kids? Our faith?

Please. This is the time for the church to rise up and serve the hurting. To offer comfort and hope to people who only know fear and panic.

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I think of the church’s response to other plagues throughout history. During the Antonine Plague, 2,000 people were dying daily and the mortality rate was 25%. Yet it was the Christians who cared for the sick and dying, often dying themselves as a result. A century later, during the Plague of Cyprian in which up to 5,000 people were dying EVERY DAY, it was once again the followers of Jesus who cared for the infected and then died infected.

It isn’t how we worship during a comfortable “worship experience” that causes the culture to take notice. It’s how we serve in the uncomfortable “suffering experience” that does. This is why the early church prospered and grew. This is why numbers were added to the church daily. And now, in 2020, the church has another opportunity to “take up our cross and follow Him” in laying down our comforts, rights, and possibly even our lives in our service of the Father and others.

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By all means, wash your hands. Blow your nose into a tissue and cough into your arm. But for the sake of the gospel, don’t retreat in fear to the comfort of your home. Step into the light and BE the light. As you do, you’ll kill off the one virus that is more contagious that the coronavirus, because fear is only viral if it has a carrier.

Refuse to carry it. Pick up peace instead, and carry it to everyone, everywhere.