A family had joined a church where I pastored, having relocated from South Africa. In conversation, he said he made the decision to move to this country when he saw our Australian newspaper headline that a policeman had been killed. He explained that where he had come from, policemen were so often killed that it was no longer even newsworthy.
I am so glad to live in Australia where the sadness of any death to Covid19 is newsworthy. Much as the news is depressing, and perhaps my response is a reaction to world news which seems layered with mind-numbing statistics, nevertheless, there remains a concern for each individual, each household, each family, each worker.
I suspect we need statistics as a way of persuading ourselves that we comprehend the magnitude, or of detecting trends. God doesn’t need statistics. He is uniquely capable of knowing each of us, even the number of hairs on our heads.
We are in the care of a shepherd who is concerned for the one who has wandered, even though there are ninety-nine safely in the pen. “I know my sheep and my sheep know me” He says.
Statistics are irrelevant when the one who is suffering loss, who is out of work or whose business has collapsed, is known to you. And each of us is known to God. He doesn’t need statistics. He doesn’t deal in trends.
So “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven” Jesus said (not hidden anonymously in a statistic).
Pastor Peter