It will soon be two years since we first began to hear of a “novel virus” that could threaten to devastate the world’s population. From early in 2020 we have been bombarded with information, as our lives have been disrupted by a myriad of sometimes conflicting instructions on how best to protect ourselves and others from this apparent threat. At first it was “just mask up and social distance”, then it became “we need to shut down all public gatherings, and limit business to just essential businesses (whatever that means) for a few weeks to flatten the curve”. Then it was maybe by spring or summer we can lift the restrictions. What made it all more confusing was that in some places restrictions were being heavily enforced, while in others they seemed almost to be ignored. The expected numbers of infections at first did not climb as fast as expected, but then later began to exceed expectations. We kept being told that the “experts” were following the science, and who wants to be the one to argue against “the science”!  So most of us complied, some more reluctantly than others, but for the first year or so we did our best to put up with it “for the sake of our collective safety”.

Then the vaccines came out, and we were told that once enough of us are vaccinated then the restrictions can be lifted and we can go back to normal. But once again, the story changed. People were not as eager to be vaccinated as some had hoped. Conflicting messages were being circulated by various media. The CDC and WHO at certain points were putting out contradicting information. Some doctors boldly stepped up proclaiming that the virus could be effectively treated by repurposing well established, safe and available drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin if it could be treated in the early stages. This news was surprisingly met with vicious opposition from the “experts” who claimed to be “following the science”, and suddenly we were inundated with media claiming Hydroxychloroquine was dangerous and Ivermectin was a “horse medicine” and these should never be used to treat Covid in humans! Which was confusing, because both of those drugs had been FDA approved and used safely for human treatment for the past thirty years. Some doctors were prescribing these drugs and experiencing significant success. Doctors who claimed this treatment should be approved were threatened with fines and fired from their jobs. Those who tried to take the message public were censored and silenced by media corporations like Google, FaceBook and YouTube.

Never before had we seen medicine, politics and media so intimately intertwined. In the past medical science had always welcomed those who questioned outcomes and suggested alternative approaches to treatment. In the past media reporters were vigilant to dig for truth and exposed corruption, always challenging the most powerful people with hard questions in an attempt to expose the truth. Now suddenly, everything seems to be on its head! Hospitals are expelling good doctors with stellar qualifications because they asked the wrong questions! Reporters are told exactly what questions they can and can’t ask of certain government officials. Politicians openly lie and contradict themselves, and then claim they didn’t and the press doesn’t challenge them. Anyone who does challenge the official narrative is labelled as a rebel, or terrorist, a danger to society because they are spreading dangerous conspiracy theories.

Possibly the worst outcome of all this so far is that friends and neighbors who prior to covid got along just fine, have been told not to trust each other, to report each other if they see an infraction of “the rules”. Families are fractured over the vaccination issue. Grandparents are not allowed to see their grandchildren because they have or haven’t been vaccinated. Where will this end? Will the unvaccinated end up confined in interment camps? Will they be forced to take the vaccine? How did we get to this point when the global statistics are still telling us that most of us have a better than 99% chance of surviving the virus even if we do nothing. How did we become so afraid of something that is less likely to kill us than about a hundred other possible causes of death? And most of all, will the world ever get back to normal?

Does anyone even remember what normal was like? Here’s the interesting thing about normal – I don’t believe normal ever existed. There is a phrase that author Patsy Clairmont made famous in the title of her book, “Normal is just a setting on your dryer”.  The truth is, our world is constantly changing, it always has been, and likely will continue to do so. What we call normal is simply the routine we have become comfortable with in the tiny corner of the world that we occupy, and when someone upsets our routine, we typically get upset with someone. Ironically, most of us occasionally choose to change our routine for any number of reasons, and in that case it’s just fine. So the issue is not really that we don’t like change, its that we don’t like to be told to change by someone else. So what’s the root of the issue here? When we boil it all down to the charcoal in the bottom of the pot, it’s more or less that “I want what I want when I want it”, and in order to get it I have to have at least a little more power and influence than the person next to me otherwise they will get what they want when they want it at my expense. This is the game humans have been playing at various levels since the dawn of time. It began in Genesis chapter 4 when Cain killed Abel because God wouldn’t give Cain what he wanted, and humans have been killing each other to get what they want ever since. When humans are left to themselves it always ends the same way, somebody dies because somebody has, what somebody else wants and won’t give it up. Sometimes it’s the person who has the coveted prize that dies, sometimes it’s the one who wants the coveted prize that dies, but in the end Cain kills Abel because Cain can’t have what he wants. Sadly, just like the biblical story, Cain still doesn’t get what he wants after Abel is dead, in fact, he loses even more, and here is why: because what really Cain wanted was God’s approval, something only God could give him, and would have given him if Cain had listened to God when God warned him of the fear that was waiting to take advantage of Cain’s anger.

So this is the choice we have, if we want our world to “get back to a new, better normal”. We have the same warning. There is the potential within each of us to give in to our fear and anger which may cause us to go out and murder someone (if not physically, with our words, which Jesus said is pretty much the same thing), or if we choose to listen to the spirit of God that warns us of this danger, we can instead choose to rather surrender to God’s love for us, and allow that love to drive out our fear and replace it with boldness and compassion. Our world will return to a new, better normal when we choose to let go of the fear that motivates us to do hurtful things to ourselves and other people. Fear is an illusion. Fear only has power over us to the degree that we believe the lie that we are supposed to be afraid. We are taught that God is love. There is no fear in love, because perfect love (God) casts out ALL fear. When I know who I am…who God created me to be. When I begin to understand how much He loves me, I do not need to fear anything.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present not things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”    (Romans 8:38-39 ESV)

Our world will never return to the way it was before Covid, ever. We can’t go back. We can only go forward. Truth is, I don’t want it to go back to the way it was any more than I want it to return to the way it was in 1986, or the middle ages for that matter. What I do want is to be able to live in peace, and we can have that right were we are despite the world around us looking like it’s going to pieces! When we live in God’s love, we become a potential conduit of that love to everyone we meet. Nothing frightens and threatens the enemy of our souls more than a person living in God’s love, because Satan has no power to rival that…Satan has only fear, and fear is an illusion.