One of the members of my small group mentioned he had an appointment scheduled to get his vaccine.
Another member blurted out, “Uh oh, they are going to take your brain.” This unexpected outburst was the voicing of fear from one who, despite compromised health, had previously said he is not going to get a vaccine.
We finished. I need to talk to him about that wild suggestion. “Where did you hear that stuff?”
“I heard it on the news. Well, on the internet.”
As a pastor who cares deeply for his health and his growth in wisdom, I shared that, on the internet, people may care more about him living in fear than having the truth. I pointed him toward common grace.
The vaccine is common grace given to us by God and that is a reason to receive it.
Sam Storm, a theologian from my Christian tradition, defined common grace this way:
“Common grace, as an expression of the goodness of God, is every favor, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God; …all gifts that humans use and enjoy naturally.”
Common grace means there are good things in the world that are available to everyone which they do not deserve. God has graciously given us some great advantages beyond the saving grace of Jesus' work on the cross.
God gave ingenuity and wisdom to his image bearers to sequence the structure of the coronavirus and develop a vaccine that would literally teach our cells how to create the antibodies necessary to fight against the coronavirus when it intrudes our bodies.
Those with worn out, aged, and compromised immune systems can be given this key without having to develop the antibodies on their own. This is grace.
This is an undeserved, beautiful gift that we have been given.
We experience the bent nature of nature every day, Christian scripture says that all creation is groaning, and we have all experienced that groaning in particularly acute ways over the last 13 months. And yet, God has been gracious. I am amazed that we have tools to even combat such a natural evil like coronavirus. God has given us something to defend against the natural ramifications of the curse first unleashed in the garden so long ago.
Every day, since we went into lockdown in early March 2020, I have prayed, alongside my family, that God would quell the coronavirus. That he would graciously end its spread by abrupt stoppage or by giving his image bearers the tools to render it ineffective.
He has done that.
I have received my vaccine. I am a healthy young man, and I am so grateful that I can receive the vaccine as a clear bit of grace and a means to love my neighbors, and my fellow small group member, who have far more risk factors than myself.
I told him that I am ready to receive this bit of common grace for him, to protect him because I love him. I have not hugged many friends for a year so I could love him. I have worn a mask so I could love him. I have not thrown the door of our house open to gregarious hospitality so I could love him. And now I will accept a jab in the arm so I can love him. Because God has given me access to a common grace to love him in far more effective and final ways than the things I have been doing for the past year. Praise be to God!
I shared all of the above with the heart of a pastor, with a desire to see him live in this world with an understanding of its brokenness but also the redemptive, restoring character of his King who will one day make all things new.
A week later I received a text from him. “I am scheduled to get a vaccine next week.”
My reply, “Wonderful.”
It is wonderful when one sees the common grace given to us - when a fellow image bearer accepts an unexpected gift given to us. God is not required to give us these advantages but he did. He does not have to be gracious to us in this suffering we experience but he is. It is in his character to be gracious and there is evidence of this truth even in the middle of a pandemic.
This has been a hard year, a taxing year, but by God’s common grace it will be a memory.