“Where Sin Abounded - Grace Did Much More Abound”

The novel, “A Tale of Two Cities” in describing the French Revolution, starts with the rather startling phrase, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

I’d like to reverse the order of the times and the words, if I may, and say with emphatic certainty that the last 3 years were the worst of times - and that we are now on the cusp of turning this around and living out our years on earth in the best of times.

This week and in following weeks, I shall point out the very many ways in which but for the covid years of tyranny, we would be much poorer and much less invested with all those treasures which Providence has designed for us - to give our lives meaning, purpose and an unshakeable destiny.

Many of us “lost” friends during the three years from 2020. But we can only lose that which we already possess - and if those we considered friends were not really friends at all, did we really possess their friendship? If a flu virus was the test of friendship and if in fact the virus had such power over “friends” that on account of conversations over tidings of supposed deaths 3 thousand miles away (China), they ceased being your friends - were they friends at all to start with?

If upon the unleashing of lockdowns and masks on our long-suffering people, the “friends” ceased communicating with us and regarded us rather as “untouchable” and lesser beings - could it possible that they were anything but our friends to begin with?

And when the corporate tyranny working in tandem with the government tyranny (which is the definition of fascism), pressured, bullied, pursued, mandated and harried the population to get injected with an experimental “vaccine” (which does not protect you from the disease and may damage or kill you), there were many “friends” who fell in line with the tyranny.

Some of these friends sheepishly came to us for succour and help and proclaimed that they had been duped. These we embraced, comforted and counselled, since “that’s what friends are for.”

But other friends ceased being friends. You either got the “shot” and were admitted into their hallowed circle of jabbed lemmings - or else, you were expelled and excluded from this ridiculous and self-righteous society of groupies and misfits. Whilst calling you misfits, all along they were defining the word as applying perfectly to themselves. Under no breadth, depth or stretch of imagination could the latter have been your friends. By losing them, you lost nothing, since you did not have them to start with.

We do not have the same luxury with relatives. They do remain related to us - no matter how egregiously they have tried to disown us (or vice versa)! But the same logic applies - how close were they to us really, to begin with, if such things as masks, lockdowns and vaccines can make them erect all kinds or walls between them and us? We love them still - but in the same way that the prodigal son was loved by his Father.

In the Gospel according to St. Mark, Jesus asks the timeless question - “what does it profit a man or woman to gain the whole world - and lose his or her soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul?”

Those who resisted the tyranny by the Grace of God, have also kept their souls intact and this, according to Jesus and according to the judgement of the centuries, is priceless.

Another miracle took place in the lives of those who resisted - God gave us new friends who became closer to us than blood brothers or sisters! This was also foreseen in the Gospels, where Jesus predicts: “There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, -But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time: houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.”

The new friends we have made in the last three years of tyranny are those who have embraced, comforted, consoled and sacrificed for us - the stuff of true friendship. The stuff that “rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep.”

The new friends we have made during the last three years will do anything for us. They already have put themselves, their lives, their families on the line for us. We have laughed together, cried together, danced together, walked the fields together. As the book of Proverbs says, “there is a friend that walketh closer than a brother.”

As you can see, there is a pattern that emerges - where the tyranny was most fierce, new friendships sprang up and were cherished and fostered that were fiercer still. Where the tyranny tried to keep us apart, our new friends fought like tigers to keep us together.

On a much grander scale, this applied to Jesus Himself. He turned the worst possible thing that could have happened to Him, the crucifixion and the Cross, into the best possible thing for us - His Resurrection and life everlasting for us.

For, “where sin abounded, Grace did much more abound.”