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Hope in a time in Ebola



 Micah 1:9

For her wounds are incurable.

For it has come to Judah;

It has come to the gate of My people—

To Jerusalem.


Thought for the day – The hope in Ebola

I was struck by our verse today from Micah about Judah's wounds being uncurable, and it got me thinking about uncurable diseases. One of the reasons I was thinking about uncurable diseases is because recently there's been an outbreak of Ebola in Africa, cantered on the Democratic Republic of Congo with over 5000 deaths. As someone who has worked in healthcare in Africa, Ebola has always scared the pants off me. The symptoms start innocuously enough a bit like the flu but quickly progress to vomiting diarrhoea, rash liver and kidney failure and internal and external bleeding. On average 50% of people who get Ebola will die from it. There is a vaccine against one of the three forms of Ebola but no treatment. 

If the outbreak continues as it is it is on track to become the biggest outbreak of Ebola since in discovery and the amazing thing in all of this is that because of the political climate of the area, it the Church who is on the frontline of care and is offering hope. 

The Church is leveraging the pre-existing trust of local church leaders, including the inspiring, day-to-day dedication of Catholic sisters—to combat rumours and deliver critical public health interventions. There is a strong cross denominational response to address the misinformation regarding Ebola and it’s origins. They share best practice and they are working to replace the message of fear with the message of hope. That God has not abandoned them. So let’s pray for our African sisters and brothers as they face one of the biggest health challenges and pray that God intervenes in a powerful way bring this particular crisis to an end.


This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


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