It’s strange how things come to mind: during the lockdowns and the vaccine coercion, I remember waiting in vain for the public prayers at church to mention the unvaccinated or for those of us who were resisting the coercion, or even for the unvaccinated health workers or nurses who were losing their jobs. I think not one prayer was offered in the public prayers, for us as a group, during that time.
There was one occasion, near the end of the six months in which I was shut out from going to work and a bunch of other things (most I didn’t care about, e.g. the gym, the bottle-shop) when I remember one of the intercessors prayed for unvaccinated nurses.
No one actually considered what they were doing to us, or to each other, in urging one another to take an experimental medication.
Now, these people are starting to wake up.
I still don’t know that they had much excuse, for shutting us out and allowing us to be vilified, for not praying for us (at the least one suspects that they should have been praying that the Lord would open our eyes, if they really thought we were in the wrong).
I suppose I should be grateful that in my case, the church didn’t ban me from attending entirely. Many did.
But I wonder to myself – the coercion was so bad – yes they were bewitched, in a sense, by psychology and science – a variety of sorcery, really – but is that an excuse?
Because when I think about the people who resisted the coercion, they were often not the stupid people, not the unknowledgeable, not the uneducated, but they were the most educated, the most intellectual, the most knowledgeable. Those who saw them resisting knew they were smart people. My list of acquaintances who resisted includes three health workers and two doctors, and also at least three of the most intelligent people I know.
But now, the people who just went along with it are waking up. They’re beginning to realise that they were had, they were swindled, they were fooled, they were manipulated, lied to, and bamboozled.
The awful weight of the responsibility for the way some people behaved at this time is beginning to dawn on those people. The fact that none of the vaccines worked, that they were all harmful.
We who resisted – we need to exercise grace - towards those who are waking up.
Their need for forgiveness is beyond our power to give: it is only God who can forgive such sins. As their eyes are opened we need to not only forgive, but point them towards the gracious God, the God of Jesus Christ, who is the one and only God, who loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Amen ……and blessings to you.