COVID-19

Protect me, O God, because I take refuge in you.                                                                                     Psalm 16:1

COVID-19 changed the world when it hit in early 2020. It is hard to believe that it has been six years since those dramatic changes took place. It was March 11, 2020 when my office changed from in-office counseling to telehealth. That was my first day in providing mental health services by way of distance counseling. Now, of course my agency, New Creation Counseling Center, offers both in-office as well as telehealth services. Ever since March of 2020, remote work has expanded exponentially in all areas of the business and education fields.

COVID-19 was a scourge that brought death and fear into the world. We saw on the news pictures of mounds of coffins in Italy. We saw makeshift morgues in New York City and other large cities around the world. People stayed home, and only ventured out with their own small circles of family/friends. Churches and businesses were deeply affected. Our entire lives were changed, with some of those changes lasting to this day. I can still remember the joy we had when we could find the new vaccines which had just been developed.

COVID-19 is still with us today, but it has mutated often and has become less virulent. Indeed, it is an evolutionary tactic to mutate and become less virulent, lest all the hosts of the virus die off and there is no more way to propagate itself. The influenza virus that originated in 1919, (the wrongly named Spanish Flu) is still with us today in forms that are not nearly as deadly as a century ago.

We have learned to live with COVID, and now people often get the virus and shrug it off with words like, “I felt bad for a couple days, like a cold, it was probably COVID but I didn’t bother to test”. Yes, that virus is still with us, but we have learned to live with it.

However, our culture has been permanently changed by that virus in many ways. Many churches lost swaths of attenders; working remotely has become quite commonplace; faith in institutions has eroded; and our cynicism has grown like the virus.

We learned a lot about ourselves in facing crisis. We had a lot of heroes at work during the COVID crisis, and we had people who became opportunists and found ways to scam vulnerable people.

As we look back, I hope we have learned some lessons about how to respond to health crises in the future.

Prayer: Lord, look favorably on your people who are often like lost sheep, Amen