It’s Easier to Endure a Pandemic When …

It’s easier to endure a pandemic when we believe that it will come to an end. When we’re in the middle of something, it’s difficult to know how everything will play out. Things could get worse before they get better. But generally we believe that COVID-19 will pass, just as the Black Death, the Spanish flu, and SARS did.

This is true for anything. Imagine that you break your ankle. How would you feel, experiencing that pain and inconvenience? Now imagine how you would feel if you knew you’d never heal. Think of how it would feel to lose your job. It probably would be scary, but you would have the expectation that you would find another job. Now imagine if you didn’t have that prospect — if you believed that you would never work again.

What we believe about tomorrow impacts how we feel and act today.

Things will get better, or they won’t. We can hope, or we can despair. When we believe that things will get better, hardship is much easier to endure, isn’t it? The light at the end of the tunnel pulls us forward. Here’s the best example of this:

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself,
lest you become weary and your hearts give up.
— Hebrews 12:1-3 —

Jesus endured the cross — the greatest suffering ever experienced — because of the joy that was set before Him. The Father gave Jesus a vision of the future — a new earth, where God and people are utterly together, where there is no sorrow or pain or death. This shining light got Jesus through the darkest night.

Each one of us lives in the midst of a dark night of one sort or another, to one degree or another. The night might get even darker. But that doesn’t have to be how it ends. We can choose hope. We can choose to pursue the light at the end of the tunnel. We can trust that there will be an end to suffering one of these very days.

There are far, far better things ahead
than any we leave behind.

C. S. Lewis