This wasn’t the year we looked forward to and claimed ours before the clock struck 12 on December 31st. As we looked up the smoky midnight sky sparkling with fireworks all over, nobody noticed a speck of a virus had begun sentencing people to death hundreds of thousands of miles away. Nobody knew we would be holed up in our homes three months down the line when we greeted one another, “Happy new year!” Nobody knew that the year would be happy and gloomy all at the same time.
It came like the proverbial thief in the night. It brought humanity down to its knees and ground the hustling world to a halt. Some said it was God’s way of healing the planet. While the planet healed, people died. Perhaps, Thanos was not completely wrong all along. Somewhere, God might be snapping his fingers to take the people who had had a full life, so that others may continue to live.
When would he stop snapping his fingers to spare the rest of humanity? People intubated, the old left to die, doctors and nurses infected, the frontliners sacrificed. Was this year designed to obliterate half of humanity?
There was something we were missing. Thanos was a villain; God was not. God designed the universe from day 0 without infinity stones to collect and crush. The stones were him all along.
In day x of the creation story, God sent his own son to turn water into wine, feed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, cure the paralytic, give sight to the blind, heal the deaf and dumb, and bring the dead back to life.
Then the story of creation turned into a story of salvation. His son broke the bread, drank from the cup of life, and carried the cross to Calvary. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and died on the same, so that we may live.
The story of salvation continued. As the virus ravaged the world and crippled our body and blinded our faith, the son of the living God looked upon us from the cross to tell us that the blood dripping from his wounded body had been healing the sick, while those who were weakened and downed by the disease were crucified beside him to whom he had been saying, “You will be with me in paradise.”
The rest of the world, the living witnesses to the little known miracles of the pandemic, would continue to live to tell the continuing story of salvation for generations to come.
