It’s safe to say that 2020 has not gone exactly how any of us had planned. Seniors couldn’t have the graduations they hoped for. People lost jobs. School went online and maybe worst of all was the fact that people all over the world were affected by this horrible, deadly virus.
Frankly, as touching as it was to see people stand together for those first couple of months (from a safe social distance, of course), the reality of what was happening around the world was still overwhelming. Even though COVID-19 isn’t exactly the only thing in the news anymore, in so many ways it feels like this madness is far from over.
We’re in a community again, but for the first time ever we have to wear masks to class. Freshman have to begin their first year of college six feet apart. Employees have to make new adjustments. Seniors have to spend their final year of college facing a virus that many of us thought would be long gone by now. We’re living in a different world.
Even though COVID-19 has given us some unique opportunities, at this point most of us are sick of it. Sick of the loneliness from quarantine and social distancing. Sick of hearing the news. Sick of living in the “new normal” when all we want is the old normal.
Maybe for some of us even Christian comfort isn’t very comforting anymore. We hear, “God is with us,” but we don’t feel it. We know God is in control, but we just really want all this to end. We want to hug our friends again, to sit together normally, to not have to be so careful all the time. All those feelings are so real, and they touch each of us in different ways.
In this unusual year, though, I’d like to suggest that maybe the reason we don’t find as much comfort in realities like “God is with us” is because we say it in our minds, but don’t really believe it in our hearts. Since many of us have heard about God our entire lives, unintentionally we often put Him in a very particular part of our minds, the part that has lots of knowledge to pull out so we can say the right thing at the right time. The part that limits God to a Sunday sermon, a Bible class, a bumper sticker or a t-shirt.
So often we make God out to be so spiritual that we forget He’s real. He’s not just a fact that we pull out of our heads or a reason that we make one choice over another. We can’t physically see Him, but there’s a whole host in heaven that does, and one day we will too.
When we’re overwhelmed by 2020 and we pray, it’s not just spiritual. A very real, holy, personal being is listening to us, and God isn’t just with us in some semi-comforting metaphorical sense. He’s everywhere, and, even though we can’t see Him, He’s physically present in the room with us.
God isn’t just a notion in our minds. He’s a very real, present, living being. He feels our pain with us. He’s there for us to bring that to Him. He’s not just a religious concept in our minds but Someone who is very real and very present and who every person on the face of the earth will see one day. Take refuge in Him. COVID-19 is an invisible force. Even though we can’t see it, we know it’s there. God is there, too.