Our country reached a grave and heartbreaking milestone recently. We recorded 500,000 deaths associated with the COVID pandemic. That’s one half million souls lost. Let the enormity of that sink in for a moment.
Regardless of where you stand on the validity of this number… Regardless of the age of those who have died… Regardless of any “existing conditions…” Regardless of ANY position you take during this pandemic, I ask that you put those opinions aside for a moment. Immerse yourself with me, for that moment, as I look behind the numbers and acknowledge how deep and long-lasting these losses are.
I know there are people reading this blog who have lost loved ones either directly because of COVID or throughout this pandemic from other causes, resulting in memorials that were less than “satisfying,” still longing for some kind of closure for their families. Their hearts are broken, in some cases, perhaps forever. I grieve alongside them and so wish this wasn’t the journey they were on.
Each one of those half million deaths was absolutely under the sovereign hand of a good, Almighty God. Hard to wrap our heads around that one, isn’t it? I, too, can’t understand that. But I trust the truth of it because I trust the God behind it. You may not be there yet. That’s OK. We are all on our own personal path to understand God and his character.
So, even trusting in that character, I struggled with the enormity of this loss. Every single one of those deaths brought incredible grief to those who lost that loved one. Grandchildren lost beloved grandparents. Children watched from afar as parents slipped away. Women and men in short or long-term marriages became widows and widowers. Parents lost children. Siblings lost siblings. Friends lost friends.
There are literally millions of people grieving someone dear to them. Someone they’ll never see again in this life. Someone whose death created a crater-sized whole in their soul.
Who have you lost throughout your life? Do you recall the agony of that loss? The deep, profound grief that crashed into you upon their death? The weeks and months and even years that followed with no complete healing?
I do. I remember every detail surrounding the deaths of both parents. I still grieve their absence in my life all these many years later. I know first-hand the heartbreak of becoming a widow. I’ve often said I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone. My advice to my women friends, only half-jokingly, is to go first. But it’s not our call.
Would some of the elderly who died from COVID have passed soon even without COVID? Probably. But as someone who lost an “elderly” husband, I can tell you that the pain isn’t any less, just because of their age. Nor is it less because you knew it was coming. If you’ve read my blogs or books, you know how deeply I still grieve the loss of this man I loved for decades.
So what is my goal in looking behind these statistics? Can we even bear to consider the magnitude of the collective grief that’s descended upon our nation and around the world? Do any of us have the strength to focus on the enormity of that?
Admittedly, we can’t adequately understand it, nor is it necessarily healthy to try to for any length of time. We don’t want to slide any further down into whatever discouragement or despair we already feel from the past year.
What I do hope can come from this “exercise” is to look past those statistics. Make a renewed commitment to pray corporately for the millions suffering right now. Pray that the God of the Universe would bring an end to this pandemic, and that his will would be done through it.
And closer to home, reach out to someone who is grieving a loss, whether it was through this last year, or beyond. Likely they’re still hurting. It could certainly be a loss from death, but others lost their jobs or their livelihoods or their security or their health or their peace. The list, unfortunately, is endless. And so is the need for compassion.
I fear that we all, myself included, can become complacent when we are hit with death statistics in the range of a half million and beyond. Just another day of deaths in the pandemic. What can one person do?
My ministry, by its very nature, consistently puts hurting people front and center in my world. “God, help me to extend compassion and kindness to each of them, even through my own pain.”
I pray that God lays someone (or several “someones”) on your heart this week. Friends or acquaintances that you know are hurting, for any number of reasons. Ask God to give you the fortitude to step into their hurt (even figuratively) and let them know you care and are praying for some morsel of healing. May God bless you in return.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our affliction,
so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction,
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
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