Where’s Jesus in COVID-19?

It started with toilet paper disappearing off shelves, and now, months after the COVID-19 pandemic first hit American shores, it seems as though we’re living in some apocalyptic movie. Makeshift hospitals are set up in abandoned parking garages, and Samaritan’s Purse has set one up in Central Park. I email my friends in New York City, asking how they are, if they can breathe the air. There is nothing on our calendars except a few anchoring practices: daily walks, prayer with our church family, a Zoom call with college friends.

We feel our mortality. Anxiety comes creeping in or overwhelms us like a wave. In the West, we feel stripped bare, barren, and disoriented in the heat of this new reality. Our current cultural moment with the COVID-19 pandemic is a wilderness moment for the world.