It is Sunday morning and we’re not going to church because of the pandemic. Common sense and health precautions against the coronavirus have cancelled all church services in the area. It is a first in my life time and deeply troubling. I know the decisions to close Mountain Life Church were made only after much prayer and pastoral soul searching and I respect the decision.

If one looks at the country as well as at the entire world, it may look dire. Across the globe almost all churches are empty, dark and locked. God’s people are absent. There are no mega congregations of believers. There is no public praise and worship, no old hymns being sung, no choirs or contemporary music teams on stage. There are no preachers preaching in front of us or priests celebrating rites. There are no exhortations of the Word of God. There are no collections. Today we see what our nation and world will look like without God at the center and without Christ worshiped in public. The enemies of Christianity would like to believe it’s their evil hey day dancing with the devil.

There is no victory for Satan. He’s already vanquished. God is in control on His throne. The churches may have gone dark for a while but believing Christians have not. The “church” is not the building or what takes place on a Sunday morning. We who follow Jesus are the ecclesia, the called out ones, Christ’s ambassadors. We are His Body on the earth and we are actually more visible right now exactly where we are in the solitude of our own homes. God will use the pandemic for His glory.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.…Isaiah 55:8

In fact this morning we’re more recognizable as the Body of Christ than we were last Sunday because today all our denominational and theological differences are stripped away. The self imposed filters of church identity are not on display. Today the practice of the Christian faith is leveled for all believing Christians. It doesn’t matter if the church you attend is called evangelical, conservative, catholic, congregational, episcopalian, lutheran, methodist, etc, etc. Today, stripped of buildings, people, rites, services, music, preaching and church differences none of us dares to claim a name greater than Jeusus’. We are simply Christians and His Body.

We may be scattered but we’re definitely not divided. For as along as this pandemic keeps us at home, God is giving us a 2.Chronicle opportunity to be His Church:

If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2. Chronicles 7:14

All across the planet, can we the Body of Christ, the Church of Jesus who are called by His Name obey the Lord? Will we realize who we’re called to be, humble ourselves and repent for the sin of church divisions? Will the Church pray today as the triumphant Church?

A view at us from above the clouds or space can see either lax, lukewarm and nominal Christians hunkering down in isolation, just waiting for the time when things go back to their normal church. Or it can be the blessed sight of countless millions of Christian believers stretched across the globe from China to Africa to Europe to the United States and to the ends of the earth, on our knees, symbolically linking arms and calling out to God to heal the land He’s promised we will take.