Pandemic Comfort: God Will Be With Us In The Times

Comfort in the midst of pandemic comes when we believe God’s beautiful promise that He will always be with us. In every difficult situation, He will not leave us. Yet, no difficult situation will leave us unchanged. Read how the 2020 Pandemic has changed the world, as seen from our eyes.

Can you believe this world we’re living in right now?

This world of history in the making?

No one has ever before lived this exact experience.

Yes, plagues and epidemics and wars have rocked the foundations of lives before. Tremendously difficult times, such as bubonic plague, persecution of Christians, the World Wars, and more.

Yet no one in the modern world could have foreseen what’s happening on our streets today. Not just the streets of our town, of our country, but the world over!

It is truly incredible. And for some, incredibly difficult. Many people are suffering, and our prayers are with them.

In the midst of all this, we wonder and imagine,

these people who went before

how did they do it?

How did they survive?

Anne Frank and Her Secret Annex Courage

I’ve had

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.

What is waiting in line for an hour to buy a fast-food meal compared to not knowing if you’ll ever get to stand in a line again? And that line is likely to be into a concentration camp.

Not being able to walk into an Olive Garden to eat is so minor compared to never walking out your front door.

Anne Frank’s attic was locked from the outside. She had to wait for someone to release her from the space where she breathed the same air day in and day out.

And yet, aside from the scale of really hard things,

this pandemic life isn’t easy, is it?

Living in our world with complete freedom changed to hesitation and deliberation and carefulness in the span of a few weeks.

Quarantine, school closures, no church service, empty grocer’s shelves and job layoffs are huge stress triggers.

So how can we survive this hard time with less stress and worry?

How to Find Comfort in the Midst of Pandemic

Not all the ways our lives have changed are bad:

• People are kinder. Paying the balance on someone’s bill. Offering to shop for people who can’t go out.
• Service workers are on the news more than celebrities. This is a world that needs truck drivers, medical personnel, and factory workers.
• We’re taking walks and looking for ways to entertain our children. The “bear hunt” is the sweetest thing ever. Place a bear in your window for the families to find while they’re out walking.
• We’re becoming more thoughtful. People are turning to God for comfort and strength. We’re discovering we can’t live as independently as we were used to. In our church, families and small groups are taking the time to stream gospel singing to shut ins, evening after evening. Listening to live singing is so much more meaningful than a recording.
• We’re reminding each other of God’s promises to be with us, no matter what.
• Humor is a huge pandemic comfort. People who look at the funny side instead of the tragic are immensely helpful in times like this.

How do you find comfort in the pandemic?

This post was written in 2020, now a few years in the past.

The world appears to have slipped back into normal living, or at least what we call normal: freedom to go where we please and shop for the things we want.

Is this back-to-normal world a better place in response to the hard time we went through? Are we more in tune to our neighbors’ needs? Has the kindness and caring held on?

I hope so. Because, even though that pandemic is over, our world is still a place of pain and sickness and sadness. And we need to connect with others just as much as we did then. To help each other, to pray for each other, and to comfort those in today’s hard times.

May God be near you during hard times.