COVID has brought a new sense of loneliness to many of us. We now find ourselves cut off from family and friends—and sometimes even other human beings in general—in ways we have never experienced.
God is a relational God, and He has created us in His image and likeness to be relational beings. God knows, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18), and this is why He has created marriage and family and friendships.
Yet now many of us suddenly find ourselves cut off from one another due to COVID. Certainly, those who succumb to this virus are immediately forced into strict isolation and quarantine, and those who are hospitalized suffer in isolation and sometimes die far removed from the comfort of family and friends.
What truths does God give to steady us in this strange period of time?
1. God has made us for Himself. Marriage, family, and all kinds of other friendships are all special gifts from the Lord. Yet even the best of marriages and family life and the closest of friendships were never designed to meet our deepest needs for relationship with others.
Our deepest needs can only be met in a personal relationship with the living God, and in particular with the Triune God composed of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God’s Triuneness reminds us that God is a relational Being in and of Himself. In other words, unlike us, He can enjoy fellowship within Himself. He doesn’t need us, and yet we were created in such a way that we need Him. God made us so to have a relationship with Him, and even to know Him as a Triune Being. God created us so that we might know Him as our Heavenly Father, know Him in the person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who died on the Cross of Calvary so that we might have the forgiveness of our sins and new life, and know him as the Holy Spirit who is God at work in our lives giving us new life.
There is also the amazing reality of how the Bible describes God coming to live within human beings. In 2 Corinthians 13:5, the Apostle Paul makes the startling claim that for believers, “Jesus Christ is in you” (italics added). Who could have ever imagined this? The Son of God living inside us. Yet Jesus promised this same blessing in John 14:21, “he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (italics added). Later Jesus goes so far as to tell us, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (verse 23, italics added). Here we find the amazing promise that God the Father and God the Son will come and live in the very depths of our beings. God does all this through His Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the One who enters into our lives and connects us up with all the blessings secured by Christ, including a new and restored relationship with our Heavenly Father.
2. God created us to enjoy His presence. His presence in our lives can be far more intimate than the closest and best of human relationships—and God’s presence is available to us 24/7 for the rest of our earthly lives, regardless of where we are or whatever is happening to us.
But God has even more for us. He has created us to enjoy His presence for all eternity. The day will come when we will be ushered into God’s presence and “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). For the Christian, the best is yet to come.
3. God also provides a redemptive family of other people for His children both here and for all eternity. When we become a child of God, not only are we brought into a new relationship with God, but we are also brought into a new relationship with all the others already in God ‘s family. Paul describes the church as “the household of God” in 1 Timothy 3:15. God knows we need fellowship with other human beings to help us, challenge us, and encourage our own hearts—and He has provided this fellowship at least partly through relationships with other believers.
Although we are not yet living in eternity when all things will be made new, we can begin to experience this new relationship with God and with His children right here in this present world. We can do this through looking to Christ as God’s gift to us, offering us both new life and new hope. A new relationship with God can change everything, including the loneliness and challenges of living in our present COVID-filled world.