Thy Kingdom Come

In 1665 Bubonic Plague, the 'Black Death' as it was called at the time, broke out in the city of London, and thousands died. Almost immediately, the royalty left the city, followed quickly by the rich, and then as one wag put it in his history of the time 'Most of the clergy suddenly decided they could best minister to their flocks from far, far away.' The scenes of horror recounted in the various plague journals kept by those who stayed are piteous. Hospitals were crammed full of the dying and quickly overwhelmed whatever doctors and nurses had not either fled or died themselves.

Even as the hireling 'ministers' of Charles II's restored episcopacy were streaming out of London, the Puritan ministers who had been ejected by the King came in to minister to sick and dying.

What can we learn about Christ and the Kingdom, and how we should minister in a lost and dying world, from the selfless sacrifices of these ministers who, though they were scorned by worldlings, cared for the soul's of stricken inhabitants of London?