Believing in our great God and Savior Jesus Christ we look and hope for Him to come again.

In this we look and hope for His glorification and ours.

His glorification will be what is called theodicy: the vindication of our God and Savior—His claims, His justice, His wisdom, His words, His works, His being the only true God.

Our glorification will be heaven.

This look and hope of Christians is precisely what irks the atheists, idolaters, and the secularists.

The three irked groups, call them together worldlings, have no interest in glorifying the true God, for they worship the things that are made; and they have nothing to look for beyond this age, this earth, beyond the range of sight, past the tip of their collective noses, outside of their big laboratories, small petri dishes, and limited minds.

Give the worldlings reason to justify themselves; give them cures for diseases, an end to poverty, power to curb those micro-aggressions of white bigots, give them peace in our time, and they are satisfied.

What especially irks worldlings is the Christian claim that the one God is the God, the Sovereign, the Judge…over all, and Who alone is the God and Savior Jesus Christ.

To worldly minds when Christians push that point, of the one God over all, of the one God our Savior Jesus Christ pathetic Christians become pests, nuisances, a threat—pains in the conscience, and a free society anti-establishment-of-religion nemesis.

What secondarily irks worldlings is the Bible’s doctrine of heaven, and all our talk of it, and hope in it. They reason that if our heads are in heaven or in religious clouds somewhere we can not possibly and whole-heartedly be concerned with making this earth a better place, and caring for anyone but fellow believers.

Nothing like a pandemic to bring these irks out.

It is also bringing believers out. In their worship. In their hoping for heaven.

In their refusing ever to mask…their Christianity.

In their always doing good to the neighbor.

In their sometimes peacefully protesting government policy on the steps of capitol buildings.

No matter if it irks.

For such a time as this.

With you in Him, confiding in the Savior and His truth and love,