“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4).
“I believe that all is well and that it is well with my soul,” said Rev. Dr. Don Hampton, pastor of New Vision Community Church in Shreveport, Louisiana. This was part of a livestreamed Sunday message he sent from his bed in a hospital isolation ward. He added: “I keep a praise handy in my heart. I keep a word and I just continue to try to do the Lord’s will even from a hospital bed.”
Two days later, he learned he had COVID-19. The following night, he was dead.
He is just one of the religious leaders who are making news by their lives and now their deaths. Another is Rev. Franco Minardi, who served for seventy years as the parish priest in Ozzano Taro, a farming town in Italy, before he died of coronavirus at the age of ninety-four.
Another is Sister Maria Ortensia Turati, one of six nuns killed by COVID-19 in a convent in northern Italy. She founded missions in the Philippines and Ivory Coast, then led her order and its many schools in Chile.
They died in the Lord, and they did not die alone.
A fact Good Friday makes clear
There are many fears associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
We fear getting it and dying of it. We fear that our families and friends will get it and die of it. We fear losing our jobs and lifestyles. We fear that this will become another Great Recession or worse. We fear that there will not be a “normal” on the other side of the pandemic, whenever that comes.
And many of us fear facing this disease alone.
If I become hospitalized with COVID-19, my wife cannot visit me. If I die in the hospital, healthcare workers will be there but my family will not. Many around the world are dying of this horrible disease at home and alone.
But God’s children are never alone, a fact Good…
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