When Pharaoh chased Prophet Moses and the Israelites to the Red Sea, there wasn’t any choice for them to survive, whether to sink in the Red Sea or to be caught by Pharaoh and his army, then Prophet Moses told them that “God would help us.”

Then God ordered Moses to put his stick over the Red Sea, and the sea parted at his command. This allowed the Israelites to escape across the sea, while Pharaoh and his army were swallowed up by the sea when it returned to its normal height.

God is our refuge in the hard times, God is our protection when we are faced with difficulties, and God is our shelter in on our hardest days. Let us hold God in our minds when we are afraid, let us think of God as only he can help us and ensure we survive.

But God will guide us to the correct way of surviving, will inspire us, and will motivate us—yes, we want God to inspire us, but God doesn’t want us to sit around and just wait for him to take the hard times away from us. God will inspire us to the work that can help us to survive, but he does not want us to live our lives like normal and be careless: we have to admit that we are living in emergency times. Yes, God wants us to stop and look around and think about what we should do.

God can easily split the sea apart for Moses, but he asks Moses to do his part by lifting his stick over the sea to part it. Moses and the Israelites knew that they were faced with a time of uncertainty and emergency, and even though they didn’t know what to do, they didn’t just stay and wait for Pharaoh to capture them. No, they found a way to escape until they were unable to progress any further on their own, then they asked God for help.

Now, we are faced with a Coronavirus. We ask God to protect us and to make this hard time go easily for us, but we have to do our part first—we have to wash our hands, to stay home, to cough into an elbow, don’t touch the face, and keep personal distance from others.

When we do our part, then we can ask God to help us survive. We can’t be sloppy and ask God alone to save us. Our researchers in the medical field are working hard to find something that will help us survive, a vaccine that will protect us. People who are working in the medical field are our heroes in this country and all over the world, let us obey their instructions, let us follow their rules, and let us help them.

When we don’t follow their instructions, we make it harder for them to protect us. They are sacrificing for us, so we have to help them and protect ourselves. Let’s wash our hands, but think of God. Let’s stay at home and pray, cough into our elbow, and say thank you to God. Let’s keep our hands away from faces while also asking God for protection, and let us keep our personal distance from other people but no distance from God.

Yes, let’s do our part! Let’s follow our leaders who are working long, long hours trying to help us survive. Let’s help our heroes, the medical workers who are sacrificing for us. Let’s pray for God to protect them and to inspire them to find the medicine and good vaccine. Let’s help them by doing our part and keep praying, keep asking God to help us to survive, keep putting God in your hearts, our minds and our work. After we do that, we can stay calm and fearless and say, “Welcome, Coronavirus.”

Maha Gabir

03/19/2020