Five years ago this past week, life as we knew it came to a grinding halt as planet earth experienced the skyrocketing spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the week we experienced the cancellation of professional conferences, sporting events, music concerts, cultural events, and live classes in schools and universities. I knew it was bad when Saint Patrick’s day parades were cancelled in Dublin!
As quarantine measures kicked in, U.S. unemployment filings shot up from 200,000 to three million during the first week, then to six million during the second. Money spent on groceries skyrocketed while restaurant spending bottomed out. In March, alcohol sales shot from $5.5 billion to $6.5 billion, a sad index of our national state of mind! In April, a barrel of oil briefly fell below $0, a sign of a world turned upside down.
During this early period, we learned a lot about stay-at-home orders, social distancing, masking, and handwashing. People panic-bought cases of toilet paper and emptied aisles of pasta. We also learned how to have meetings, teach classes, and keep in touch via cloud-based communication platforms such as Zoom. We googled “How to cut your own hair,” adopted new pets, cheered for front-line workers, saw Peloton stocks (briefly) soar, wrung our hands over supply-chain issues, and shopped more online than ever before.
For well over a year, the first website I visited each day was the New York Times COVID-19 tracker. It was stunning to watch the number of daily deaths, not to mention the various COVID surges with the Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants. I remember how deeply grateful I felt for medical scientists and researchers when news of effective vaccines emerged.
At Conejo Church we pivoted from in-person services to live-streaming a skeleton-crew service from the building before shifting to pre-recorded services with various components recorded at homes.). I’m forever grateful to the skilled professionals in our congregation who lent their expertise and time to get us up and running with these technologies, as well as sharing their wisdom and experience to help us improve our online services. It was a team effort to be sure!
During that season, I looked forward to reading the comments in the YouTube chatbox as we viewed the livestream services. But I desperately missed being together as a church family! I was proud of our ministry team for creating drive-through versions and then outdoor versions of many of our ministry events. And I was proud of our church family for sticking together and refusing to allow needless controversies about masking and vaccines to disrupt our fellowship.
Five years after the pandemic began, I’m grateful for God’s ways of sustaining us through the deep and difficult hardships of life. I invite you to take some time this week to give thanks to God for sustaining all of us through that most challenging season.
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