“The summer of 2021 is shaping up to be historic.” This is the first sentence of an Atlantic article titled, “A Quite Possibly Wonderful Summer.”

The writer points to rising numbers of vaccinations and plummeting rates of coronavirus illness and death. He suggests that “pre-pandemic norms could return to schools, churches, and restaurants. Sports, theater, and cultural events could resume. People could travel and dance indoors and hug grandparents, their own or others’. In most of the US, the summer could feel . . . ‘normal.’”

We all look forward to that day.

However, as I noted yesterday, millions will forever grieve those we lost during the pandemic. Some survivors are still experiencing “long-haul” COVID-19 symptoms. The economy, schools, and much of our world have been altered in ways that will long persist into the future.

At the same time, we should mark what good we can find from a terrible year. Not only so that we do not “waste the hurt,” but so we can prepare for a better future today.

Preparing now for the next pandemic 

Scientists tell us that genetic vaccines developed in response to COVID-19 “surpassed health officials’ highest expectations.” Going forward, once scientists determine the genetic sequence of a new pathogen, they can design such vaccines in days and manufacture millions of doses within months.

This is essentially what happened with the coronavirus pandemic. Such vaccines are also better able to respond to mutations. Now researchers hope that gene-based vaccines could provide a vaccine for malaria or HIV, cure cancer, and be ready to stop the next pandemic.

A second scientific response to the pandemic is the acceleration of wearable technology that can aid in early illness detection. Such devices can be predictive of a number of potential illnesses or other health changes.

A third response is the development of “protein networks” to develop new pharmaceutical responses to disease. One drug discovered in this way, currently being used to treat cancer, turns out to be 27.5 times more potent than remdesivir in treating COVID-19 and is now in phase three clinical trials for this application.

Experts warn that the current pandemic won’t be the last. Deforestation, our growing interactions with wildlife, and industrialized food production make more zoonotic (animals to humans) transmissions likely. Oral language broadcasts viruses that replicate in the upper respiratory tissues. Our propensity for social interaction and rising population densities make it easier than ever to spread contagious diseases.

As a result, strategies are being developed now to mark what we have learned from this pandemic in preparation for the next one. Yuval Noah Harari’s article in the Financial Times surveys cultural developments that led to the present pandemic and urges us to safeguard our digital infrastructure, invest more in our public health systems, and establish “a powerful global system to monitor and prevent pandemics.” In these ways, “the shock of COVID-19 might actually result in pandemics becoming less common.”

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord“

Our lives have changed in dramatic ways over the last year. Work, exercise, shopping, schooling, childcare, and even our interactions with nature have been affected, sometimes for the better. But the most important lesson I believe we should learn from the pandemic is spiritual rather than medical, eternal rather than temporal.

In short: we need faith in God on a level most of us do not experience each day.

I recently heard Pastor Jack Graham wisely define faith as trusting God regardless of our circumstances or our consequences. The latter part of his definition especially struck me as countercultural. You and I live in a world built on actions and consequences: we work to receive payment and other rewards; we engage in entertainment to be entertained; we develop relationships for the benefits such relationships seem to offer.

Nearly every dimension of our lives is measured by its outcome. If reading my articles does not benefit you, you’ll stop reading them. If enough people stop reading them, I’ll stop writing them.

By contrast, biblical faith trusts in God even when the consequences of such faith do not seem to merit our continued trust. For example, remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing before the king of Babylon. When he threatened to throw them into a fiery furnace if they would not worship a golden image he had constructed, they responded: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Daniel 3:17–18, my emphasis).

Another example comes from one of my favorite texts: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17–18, my emphasis).

Choosing the faith that sustains us 

International evangelist Luis Palau died yesterday. As I wrote recently, he was one of the most joyful, vibrant, courageous Christians I have ever known. He once encouraged us: “Don’t pray for an easier life. Pray instead to be a stronger man or woman of God.”

Luis knew that it is not the strength of our faith but the object of our faith that counts. We can have faith in spoiled food and become sick after eating it. We can have faith in wrong directions and get lost as a result.

Here’s a fact: Whether another pandemic strikes or not, God is still God. Whether he answers our prayers for healing in this world or the next, he is still Lord. The faith that sustains us in the hardest places is faith in a sovereign King (Psalm 22:28) who is love (1 John 4:8). Circumstances and consequences cannot change his character (Malachi 3:6).

And all of our sovereign Lord there is, is in this moment.

How fully would he say you are depending on him today?

Denison Forum

You may not remember the name of Sandra Lindsay, but future generations will. The intensive care nurse received America’s first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine last December 14 in Queens, New York. As Smithsonian Magazine reports, this event “marked a turning point in fighting the pandemic that has killed more than 535,000 Americans. And it made history.”

Now that history will be preserved for generations to come. The first (now empty) tiny Pfizer-BioNTech vial has been acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. It will be displayed along with Lindsay’s vaccination card, her scrubs, and her hospital ID.

This announcement comes as we mark the one-year anniversary of the pandemic today.

Nearly a fourth of Americans have lost a friend or family member 

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a “pandemic.” On that day, confirmed worldwide coronavirus cases stood at 125,000, with reported deaths at fewer than five thousand. A poll conducted at the time found that 44 percent of Americans considered the threat of the virus to be “exaggerated.” Nearly everyone (88 percent) predicted that fewer than ten thousand Americans would ultimately die from the disease.

This morning, Johns Hopkins confirms that more than 118 million people have been infected, more than 29 million of them in the US. More than 2.6 million people have died, including more than 529,000 Americans.

And nearly a quarter of all Americans (23 percent) say a close friend or family member has died of the disease.

Of America’s 19,502 towns and cities, only thirty-seven have a population exceeding the number of Americans who have died of COVID-19. On a tragic anniversary unlike any other in our nation’s history, where can we turn for hope in heartache and strength in suffering?

Hope for those who have died 

God’s word offers hope beyond human comprehension for those who have died in Christ.

At the grave of Lazarus, Jesus assured his dead friend’s grieving sister, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26).

When a Christian dies, they don’t. When they take their last breath here, they take their first breath there. They close their eyes in this fallen world and open them in God’s perfect paradise. They are well and they are home.

This is because, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). Now and forever.

Hope for those who are hurting 

While millions have died of this horrible disease, many millions more are grieving their deaths. In addition, a third of COVID-19 survivors have “long-haul” symptoms. Fever, cognitive confusion, debilitating exhaustion and fatigue, difficulty sleeping, heart rhythm abnormalities, breathing issues, and other symptoms can arise, sometimes weeks or months after the initial diagnosis. Some “long-haul” patients are still struggling with such symptoms months later.

In addition, economic trauma persists for millions who have lost their jobs or otherwise experienced financial setbacks because of the pandemic. The negative effects of school closures are expected to be “profound and generational.” “Pandemic trauma” is afflicting millions of Americans. Survivor’s guilt is a growing issue for many. And more than thirty million frontline workers continue to risk their lives to serve us with sacrificial courage.

To all who suffer, God promises his presence and empathy (cf. John 11:35). Jesus feels all we feel and suffers as we suffer. Theologian Jürgen Moltmann famously described our Savior as the “crucified God.”

In addition, to “those who love God” he promises that “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). We can know that “the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18) and that “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

“The Lord delivered me out of deep waters” 

Tomorrow we’ll focus on some ways God is redeeming this tragic pandemic. For today, let’s claim the promise that he is.

If you have suffered loss due to COVID-19, I invite you to claim the promises we’ve discussed. If you have not, I encourage you to share them with those who have. It may be that claiming these promises will lead to a different kind of anniversary—one that marks not our crisis but our transforming encounter with God’s grace.

Yesterday was one such day for the author of “Amazing Grace.”

I will never forget visiting John Newton’s grave in England and reading the epitaph he wrote: “John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy.”

Newton was converted to Christianity during a huge storm at sea and later testified: “That 10^th of March is a day much to be remembered by me; and I have never allowed it to pass unnoticed since the year 1748. For on that day the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.”

Are you in “deep waters” today?

If not, how will you help someone who is?

Denison Forum

I was not one of the twenty-eight million people who watched Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Here’s been my problem in the days after the interview aired Sunday night: there were actually multiple interviews, or so it would seem.

One version sees Meghan as a brave woman willing to fight for her marriage, her mental health, and her children against the prejudice and opposition of some in the royal family. Another version sees her as a vindictive outsider who did not get what she wanted and is trying to “take down” the royal family.

Some view Harry as the oppressed son of a distant father, but others view him as a troublemaking rebel seeking attention in all the wrong ways. Some viewers saw the couple as courageous trailblazers making a new way forward for royalty in the twenty-first century. But others saw them as capitalizing on Harry’s inherited platform and fortune.

It all depends on which reports you believe.

We can do this with nearly any story in the news.

• Is the growing immigration problem on our southern border the fault of the former administration, the present administration, neither, or both?
• Will President Biden’s COVID-19 relief plan make things better or worse for Americans?
• Should Governors Cuomo and/or Newsom be impeached?
• Did Dak Prescott win his contract battle with the Dallas Cowboys, or did the team?

Depending on the network you watch or the social media you consume, all are options.

My purpose is not to berate the media for its bias. Rather, it is to explain why we are where we are and to offer three biblical ways to find the truth we need in the chaos we face.

Who was “the most trusted man in America”? 

Columnist Jonah Goldberg notes that well into the nineteenth century, “people—particularly non-affluent, non-city-dwelling folk—got their news monthly or even seasonally. And the interval has been shrinking ever since. Even taking into account radio, TV, and cable news, most people in the pre-internet age got their fill of journalism in the morning and then got a brief update at the end of the day with the nightly news, or maybe the evening edition of a newspaper.”

I am old enough to remember those days well. The morning paper brought the morning’s news. The evening paper (if there was one) brought the evening news. More likely, people watched the network news for thirty minutes (usually at 5:30 p.m. CT; I grew up in Texas) and then the local news for thirty minutes (usually at 6:00 p.m.). If they really cared about what was going on, they might stay up for the 10:00 p.m. local news as well.

We had three networks and thus three news options. Walter Cronkite at CBS was our favorite, known as the “most trusted man in America” because of his objectivity. “And that’s the way it is” was his nightly sign-off. We believed him.

Then came the internet.

Now most of us get our breaking news via Twitter, Facebook, other social media, or notifications from news outlets. By the time we get around to reading, watching, or listening to the news, we mostly know what has happened. But news stations have to fill column inches, screens, and air time in order to sell ads and otherwise make a profit. Many are now doing so 24/7/365.

As a result, “news” is more opinion on the news than reporting of it. Many news programs are more entertainment than information. Analytics drive ads which drive profits, and digital media are more sophisticated than ever in tracking them. They know the time we spend on an article on our computers, our viewing habits on television, our listening habits on radio, and all the other ways we consume their content. They tailor what we see/hear/read to our preferences so they can get us to consume more content, see/hear/respond to more ads, and thus make them more profits.

We can like this, hate it, or ignore it, but it’s the way it is and the way it will be for the foreseeable future.

Three biblical responses 

What does any of this have to do with my mission as a cultural apologist to equip evangelical Christians to respond biblically and redemptively to the vital issues we face? How does today’s article relate in practical ways to you? Let’s consider three biblical imperatives for our day.

One: Practice biblical discernment. 

God’s word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” as much today as when it was first inspired (Psalm 119:105). This is because neither human nor divine nature change. What was true is still true. Thus, we need to view everything we experience through the prism of biblical revelation. Look for what God says about the issues you face, for that’s the truth you need.

Two: Seek the constant guidance of the Spirit. 

Jesus promised that the Spirit “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). He has a word for us for every moment and circumstance of our lives. Not just the “spiritual,” but the “secular.” Not just for Sunday, but for Monday. Ask him to show you the truth you need and know that he will always lead those who will follow.

Three: Aspire to be redemptive rather than reactive. 

The God who “sent redemption to his people” (Psalm 111:9) is constantly at work redeeming the bad for good and the present for eternity. Look for ways to respond rather than react to the events of our world, seeking ways to lead people to Jesus and his transforming grace (John 3:30).

“No regrets. Pure joy.” 

Luis Palau is one of the most joyful, winsome Christians I have ever met. I have been privileged to work with him in a variety of contexts and have always found him a model of Spirit-led discernment and redemptive grace.

These days, the world-renowned evangelist is battling lung cancer. Shortly after the announcement that he had been placed in hospice care, his son Andrew left his side to lead a major evangelistic event in Florida.

This might seem uncaring, except that the son was doing precisely what his eighty-six-year-old father asked him to do: “Go, Andrew. We’ve said all we need to say. No regrets. Pure joy. Now don’t let me get in the way of you preaching the Good News!”

If Luis had gone to heaven while Andrew was showing others how they can go to heaven, nothing would have made him happier. That’s because, as he told his son, he has “no regrets.”

Can you say the same? If not, why not?

Denison Forum