{"id":2009,"date":"2022-09-29T15:21:55","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T19:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2009"},"modified":"2022-09-29T15:21:55","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T19:21:55","slug":"a-cup-of-cold-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/29\/a-cup-of-cold-water\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cup of Cold Water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.

In AD 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a virus brought the Roman Empire to its knees.
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A deadly epidemic swept across the Mediterranean world. \u00a0Historians guess that it was smallpox, making its first incursion into a population that had no immunity.\u00a0
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Whole cities and provinces were abandoned and fell into ruin.\u00a0 Roman troops carried the affliction into northern Europe, where they were fighting Germanic hordes.\u00a0 The battlefields were littered with soldiers from both sides who simply dropped in their tracks, even though they had suffered no wounds.\u00a0 Before the epidemic burned out 15 years later, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the population had been lost, including the emperor himself.\u00a0
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A century later, another disease \u2013 probably measles \u2013 once again devastated the Empire.\u00a0 As many as 5,000 people died in Rome every 24 hours.\u00a0 Alexandria in Egypt, the second largest city in the Western world, lost an incomprehensible two-thirds of its citizens.\u00a0
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As historian Rodney Stark points out in his book The Rise of Christianity<\/em>, these epidemic waves packed more than just a demographic punch.
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In the face of repeated crises, ancient paganism folded like a house of cards.\u00a0 Their priests had no spiritual explanations for what was happening.\u00a0 Nor could they provide assurances that the Roman gods cared a lick about human suffering.\u00a0 Nor did they have strong social connections that encouraged people to help each other.
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Followers of Jesus had all three.
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By the middle of the third century, even before the conversion of the emperor Constantine around AD 306, the Jesus Movement had established its credentials as a community of compassion.\u00a0 That was principally due not because of what the early Christians said, but because of what they did.\u00a0
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In the midst of chaos, confusion, and death, they stuck around.\u00a0
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When the first major epidemic struck Rome, the most famous physician of the ancient world, Galen, fled to the countryside to save his own life.\u00a0 A significant number of Christians stayed behind.\u00a0 Remembering Matthew 25:31-46 \u2013 where Jesus declares that when we care for \u201cthe least of these\u201d who are sick, we are actually caring for him \u2013 they came alongside the afflicted and bedridden.\u00a0 The virus claimed many of their lives, too.\u00a0 But those who survived, and thus received the gift of immunity, were able to redouble their efforts as nurses and caregivers.\u00a0
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Many of the Empire\u2019s pagan citizens experienced the epidemics as the end of the world \u2013 the end, at least, of everything they knew and loved, including their own lives.\u00a0 But for the Christians, death did not erase the meaning of life.\u00a0 Life was meaningful even when it came to an end.\u00a0 This idea was entirely unknown in the pagan world.\u00a0
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Emperor Julian the Apostate, who despised Christianity and attempted an Empire-wide pagan revival in AD 362, admitted that Christian compassion was making his project difficult: \u201cThe impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well.\u00a0 Everyone can see our people lack aid from us.\u201d
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It was a revolutionary idea to care for someone who was in \u201cthe other camp,\u201d not in one\u2019s own family, tribe, or ethnicity.\u00a0 No pagan teacher had ever suggested such a thing.
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Did it matter that Christians took care of the sick?\u00a0 Stark points out that the odds of survival immediately go up whenever someone who cannot care for himself is provided the basics of food and water.\u00a0 Jesus also had something to say about that subject: \u201cAnd if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded\u201d (Matthew 10:42).\u00a0
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Ministering to plague-afflicted strangers won a hearing for the Good News.\u00a0
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The followers of Jesus were saying, even if they never put it into words, \u201cI may not know who you are, but I\u2019m willing to die alongside you.\u00a0 That\u2019s because of the love I have received from the Savior who died for me.\u201d\u00a0
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It\u2019s no surprise, then, that a great many people became a lot more interested in finding out what kind of God could inspire such kindness.
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And it\u2019s no surprise that our own<\/em> acts of compassion are having the very same effect on other people to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here. In AD 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a virus brought the Roman Empire to its knees.\u00a0A deadly epidemic swept across the Mediterranean world. \u00a0Historians guess that it was smallpox, making its first incursion into a population that had no immunity.\u00a0\u00a0Whole cities and provinces were abandoned and fell into ruin.\u00a0… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[157,74],"class_list":["post-2009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-compassion","tag-matthew-25"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2011,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009\/revisions\/2011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}