The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has passed 11,000 cases, making it the largest in that nation's history. Congo's health ministry counted 11,042 infections and 5,387 deaths as of Wednesday, Nov. 11.

The World Health Organization's director-general briefed member states the same day. He said the outbreak remains a public health emergency of international concern. He put the toll at almost 11,000 confirmed cases and more than 5,300 deaths, spread across eight Congolese provinces.

The disease is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus. Cases have also turned up outside Congo, in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and France, the WHO said.

There is some encouraging news. Almost 3,000 people have recovered, and the WHO said transmission appears to be slowing in some areas. But officials warned that new hotspots keep emerging. More than 1,000 people who had been in contact with the sick have been lost to follow-up, meaning health workers cannot find them to check for symptoms.

Violence has made the work harder. The WHO pointed to an attack on Cantine-Aloya that killed 66 civilians, among them three health workers. Men and women who go into these villages to treat the sick are dying on two fronts, from the virus and from the gun.

Behind every number is a name

Five thousand, three hundred eighty-seven. It is easy to read a figure like that and move on to the next headline. I would ask you not to. Each of those was a child of God, formed in the womb, known by name before the foundation of the world. Some were mothers. Some were boys who should have been in school. Some were nurses who walked toward the sickness when everyone else ran from it.

A nation that believes every human life carries the image of its Maker cannot treat a figure like that as a statistic. The same truth that tells us the unborn child is precious tells us the dying villager in Congo is precious. Life is not cheap at the beginning, and it is not cheap at the end, and it is not cheap on the other side of an ocean. God does not keep a ledger where some lives count for more.

When a plague runs through a land, men start asking the old questions. Why this? Why them? Why now? I will not pretend to give you a reason for every grave. The Book does not always give one either. Job sat in ashes and never got a full explanation. What he got was God Himself. That is the answer Scripture gives again and again, and it is a better answer than any explanation could be.

"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)

Nigh means near. Not far off, not busy elsewhere. The father who has buried a daughter in a quarantine zone, the widow who cannot even touch the body of her husband, the nurse who goes home too tired to cry: the Lord is near to every one of them. He has not turned His face from Congo. He knows the name of every village on that list.

What the believer does while the fever burns

Our Lord told of a day when He will say, "I was sick, and ye visited me." Those who visit the sick in His name are doing more than a kindness. They are standing where He stood. The health workers in those eight provinces, many of them believers, are living out that verse at a cost I cannot fully measure.

So the question for you, my friend, is plain. What will you do with what you have read? You may not be able to go to Congo. But you can pray for the sick by name before God, and you can give through a faithful church or mission that is already on the ground. You can refuse the cold shrug that says it is far away and none of our business.

And there is one more thing. Plague reminds every man that his days are numbered. The healthy and the sick alike are one breath from eternity. The gospel is not a comfort for the weak only. It is the one hope for all of us, that Christ died for sinners, was buried, and rose again the third day. A man who trusts Him does not need to fear the fever or the grave.

The numbers in Congo will rise or fall in the coming weeks. The Lord's nearness to the brokenhearted will not change at all.