For many of us, we realize we have never been in this unique place before.

The pandemic with the COVID-19 is real no matter how much we want to believe it is “just another flu" which comes around once a year and lasts about six months. We only have to look outside of our protective wall and the drum beat of our favorite “news” source to see the response of the world, not just the USA, to know something is different—terribly different about the COVID-19. It is more, much more than our normal issues with the flu. For one, we usually have a vaccine for what we believe will be the strain of the year. We have nothing for this. More than that, measures have to be extreme to contain and “flatten the curve.” Deaths always occur with the seasonal flu but this is more than that. It is not a political issue, it is a life issue.

I have never seen a response like this to the “flu.” And I have seen “many summers.” In fact, I have never experienced anything like this before in my life. I do remember the polio epidemic of 1952, because it was the polio vaccine of 1955 that caused my mother and dad to make sure we were vaccinated. I remember the shot. I remember the spot it left on my arm. I remember thin threads of the fear. But this is nothing like that, because, we do not have a vaccine and efforts to stop the spread will be catastrophic to countries, economies, and culture. It is not political, fear mongering, it is real.

I had the opportunity to visit with one of our church ministers today by video about what the future holds for church attendance once this blight has passed over our world and time. I mentioned as a church going, retired pastor, I cannot appreciate “online worship” as anything but a pale substitute of the real gathering of believers. I believe it is significant that God would use this time to teach us the meaning of community in the body of Christ. I have often used the metaphor of “it's like kissing your sister.” Not that I would know that, because the Chancellors are families of boys(mostly) but I can imagine what that would feel like. Online worship feels like that to me.

I miss congregational worship.

I miss the gathering of believers.

I miss the congregational singing.

I miss the communal listening that betrays a people hungry for the Word of God.

I miss the “amens” and the lifted hands, the congregational powerful listening and the rituals that I have associated with worship for all the years I can remember.

So I shared my uninformed opinion that God's people would pack out services and sing joyfully, and listen prayerfully, and respond open-heartedly once the “all clear” is sounded.

What I do believe is that social attenders, those folks who believe that attendance is “good business” might lose the impulse to go to church, but I am not sure that will be a terrible loss. It will be a separating if you will, of the “sheep and the goats.”

I do believe that separation will make the heart grow fonder and precipitate a yearning for that fellowship unique to serious worship. Church history shows that to be true. And we will see that proved true in our time.

What believers need to do in these days is pray, pray as we have not done since before 1904 when God last moved in power and might across a nation changing forever its trajectory. We need to pray. As we worship online, we also need to stay close to the promise of II Chronicles 7:14 close in our prayers and our heart, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”(II Chronicles 7:14 New International Version)

We can be tempted to worry or to be afraid, but God guides us to be secure in Him, confident of Him, knowing that everything at every moment is guided by Him so--we do not have to live in fear.