I can remember when the pandemic first hit the U.S. in March of 2020. I was taking classes in Lincoln, Nebraska, for my master’s program in pastoral ministry. The news that week was dire as we heard horrific reports about people in Italy hospitalized with not enough ventilators for all. On Thursday of that week, our borders were closed to Europe. And the next day I heard the governor of Minnesota on the radio as I drove back home to Minneapolis initiating the beginning of a gradual lockdown.
That following weekend, all three of the churches I pastored closed and regular emails along with Facebook sermons and Zoom replaced our contacts for the next several months. I remember at that time having a compulsory feeling to read and watch everything about COVID. I wanted to find out what I could about this new, mysterious, and seemingly dangerous virus.
But the more I was focused on watching news broadcasts and reading articles about COVID the more I began to fixate on the fearful circumstances around me and not on the Lord. I began to feel dry and off balance. I knew that if this happened to me certainly it had to be happening to my church members.
Priorities and balance
In one of my first emails to my churches I counseled them to spend at least the same amount of time in the Word of God as they were watching CNN and Fox News. I knew it would be spiritually unhealthy for me as well as for my members to fixate on these issues. This is what I wrote to them, “As I have been home seeing all of the virus updates unfold, it is very easy to see how watching hour after hours of this can cause you to become very anxious. And no wonder, it is a very real threat and there is so much information developing almost on an hourly basis. After all, we want to be safe but when you are spending all this time absorbed in this you are apt to forget some things. And the most important thing that we tend to forget is that God is still on His throne. He is not going anywhere. He has not fallen asleep or taken a vacation. He is there for us!
Are you trusting in Him during this time? He promises in His word that He will take care of all your needs. All of them… even toilet paper. Are you fretting or are you praying to Him? The only way that God can be your strength and stronghold today during this pandemic is to turn to Him and not exclusively to the news. Yes, absolutely we need to be briefed on what is happening but not at the expense of your time with God. If you spend two hours a day with the news of the pandemic, spend two hours in God’s Word. That’s the only way that you will be balanced in your perspective and outlook on life. We are not to fear like those who have no hope. Our hope is in the Lord. Over and over and over He tells us not to be afraid and to be at peace.”
Since that time, the news has become even more fearful and discouraging. It’s so tempting to catch up on all the details but after a while, your focus on God begins to wane. You begin to experience that sense of dryness and emptiness that comes from not spending time with God. And I don’t know about you, but that’s when I get scared the most. That’s when I know that I am really in need of God to put His hunger and thirst for Him back within me. That’s my red flag that I’m really in need of Him.
Many people of faith follow this principle: They never read anything from the world until they read from the Lord first. In other words, the first thing they turn to each day is God’s Word, not Facebook or the news. If there is ever a time for us to turn to God and His Word, it’s now. After all, “God’s mercies are new every morning” (Lam. 3:23).
Karen Lewis is the ministerial director for the Minnesota Conference and pastor of the Pathways Church in Osseo.
