I can still feel the weight and the worry of that moment—the dread that no one knew what was coming, as the world we all knew unraveled. For me, it’s not just a historical marker; it’s a personal wound that reshaped much of my life, my relationships, and the exercise of my faith. The images flood back: sitting alone at work with and empty building because I was deemed “essential.” Portable morgues parked outside hospitals, patients dying alone in sterile isolation wards, friends masking their faces not just from a virus but from the fear of everyone around them. New acquaintances that I thought, and imagined looked a certain way from the sound of their voice and eyes, turned out to be very different from what I had imagined they looked once masks were no longer required (that was weird). Restaurants shuttered, my kids’ school closed, and even my church locked its doors. We were left wondering when—or if—a vaccine would come.

The numbers are staggering. Over seven million deaths confirmed worldwide. But those figures, as chilling as they are, don’t capture the quiet devastation of my own world. My friend lost his father, isolated and unreachable in a hospital bed. Many small businesses I patronized for years collapsed, and to this day my preferred time for shopping on my days off (around midnight) has never returned. I lost the rhythm of Sunday mornings—the hymns, the handshakes, the comfort of a pew—and found myself staring at a screen, alone with my Bible, wondering where God was, and what he was doing in all of this.

David Wallace-Wells wrote in the New York Times that the pandemic “shattered our cities and disordered society,” creating a new “branch of history” we’re only beginning to understand. He’s right—it changed everything. Homicides spiked nearly 30 percent in a single year, homelessness swelled, and addiction—whether to alcohol, drugs, or the numbness of isolation—tightened its grip. I saw it in my own life: the way I stopped calling friends, and they stopped calling me, the way my prayers grew shorter, the way I turned inward. Wallace-Wells says it “turned us into hyperindividualists,” forcing us to process an unthinkable tragedy through the narrow lens of personal survival. I felt that shift, we all saw that shift. I stopped relying on the world around me—government, neighbors, stores, even the church building—and learned to fend for myself. To this day, people still wait in line differently than they did before this all happened.

But it wasn’t just society that fractured; it was also how I viewed my faith. I’d grown up in a cultural Christianity made in my small world—a faith of certain rituals, Sunday services, and national pride. It was comfortable, predictable, a shared identity, like a comfortable old pair of 501 Levis. The pandemic stripped that away. When the doors closed and the programs stopped, I realized how much of my belief was tied to habit, not to a living Lord. Wallace-Wells notes that the pandemic “may have halted the years-long decline of Christianity in America,” but I’d argue it exposed its weakness. A faith built on tradition or entertainment crumbles under real pressure. Biology doesn’t bend to Bible studies or patriotic hymns. The trials of 2020 demanded something deeper—something personal. And quite frankly it was a good thing, it reformed it for me.

I remember the early days, pacing my living room, scrolling through X posts about masks and vaccines, feeling my trust in public health erode. Debates raged, and I found myself doubting not just officials but the systems I’d leaned on—government, church, community. Wallace-Wells calls it a “new age of social Darwinism,” where survivors like me credited our own grit and blamed others for their weakness. I caught myself thinking that way, too—judging those who panicked, those who hoarded, those who didn’t pray hard enough. But that pride was a dead end. It left me isolated, not stronger.
What I needed—what I found—wasn’t more religion/ritual. Going to more services (when they reopened), reading more verses, or saying more prayers wouldn’t have fixed the ache. Cultural Christianity, with its rituals and vague spirituality, was and is, a hollow shell against the chaos. I needed a revitalization and renewal of relationship—not with a theology or a movement, but with Jesus Himself, alive and present. Luke 24 expresses it well. The women at the tomb, stunned to find it empty, were asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” That is a great question for all of us. Too much of my life had been seeking life in lifeless things—in routines and ritual, in nostalgia, in a faith that was more about culture than Christ. But He wasn’t there, and he never will be. He is risen, waiting for me, waiting for all of us to meet Him personally.

That shift doesn’t come easily. Our world is materialistic, wired for cemeteries, not resurrections. I was very comfortable with sermons and songs, less with silence and surrender. But in the solitude of the pandemic, I had no choice. Stripped of the crowd, I faced Him alone. And there, in the quiet, I heard His voice—not as an idea, but as a Person, and it was beautiful. My eyes opened, my heart burned, just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:31–32). He loved me—me, not some abstract “churchgoer”—and that changed everything for the better.

The pandemic made us individualistic, yes, but it also showed me that faith must be, too—not in a selfish way, but in an “hyperintimate” one. Christ meets us one by one because He loves us one by one. I still need other believers—my walk is stronger with them—but I can’t borrow their faith or hide in their rituals. I had to wrestle with Him myself (as Jacob did), and so must we all. The living Lord isn’t a national mascot or a Sunday mascot. He’s the One who says, “I am able to make all grace abound to you” (2 Corinthians 9:8), who “always lives to make intercession” for me (Hebrews 7:25). In 2020, when society shattered and my old faith changed, He didn’t, and He was enough.

Today, March 11, 2025, I remember the millions who died and the grief that still lingers—for me, for my family, for the world. I pray for leaders and health officials, knowing more pandemics may come. But mostly, I seek Him—the One who turned my isolation into an invitation, who proved that a personal relationship with Him outlasts any and all trial. He’s waiting to meet you, too—not in the dead things we cling to, but as the living Lord who loves you personally.