It's been quiet here on the blog the past couple of months. The beginning of the school year always hits me like an avalanche--even though I've done this for years, the first weeks of lesson planning and meetings and grading just find me trying to find a few moments for myself. I've had a lot of posts floating around in my brain, but haven't had time to sit down to write.
And then this popped up in my Facebook feed this morning: "If God wants you to get Ebola, you will."
Excuse me?
God's not Oprah. He's not sitting in heaven, looking down at humanity, pointing his finger and saying with glee, "You get Ebola, and you get Ebola, and YOU get Ebola. EVERYBODY gets Ebola!!!"
Ebola's an infectious disease. It doesn't care if you are rich, poor, middle class, black, white, Asian, Christian, Jewish, atheist, Muslim, Jedi, or an adherent of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Neither does cancer. Or AIDS. Or the flu.
God's not punishing people because they're the wrong color or wrong gender or sexual orientation or wrong religion or don't pray hard enough. Disease can happen to anyone, at any time. Period.
Ebola's not new. It's been ravaging countries in Africa for years; most people in the U. S. just haven't been paying attention because it was "over there," happening "to them." Drug companies, which have the capability of curing or at least slowing the disease, also haven't been rushing to make meds because there really had been no profit in it for them. Until now. When the possibility of a few people in the United States and rest of the Western world contracting the disease is at hand. Suddenly, they're rushing to create a supply of drugs, which will still take months. To top it all off, you also have some politicians advocating for the extermination of anyone who has ebola. See Todd Kincannon.
I have a feeling that God is more likely up in heaven saying, have compassion on one another, and help each other.
We destroy each other easily enough as it is.
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