I was sat in my room at the end of my first year at university. And my life was falling apart.
I had had to stay on beyond the end of term to do a couple of weeks training on workshop equipment. So most of my friends had gone home. I was DJ in the university discos (rare for a first year!) and radio station. But they had all fallen silent – so I no longer had an audience.
I wasn’t even sure why I was there anymore. I’d wanted to go into the RAF as an engineer since I was 11 – even got a scholarship. But following a road accident a couple of years earlier, that prospect of a career had just withered away.
And then – right at the end of term – my girlfriend announced she wanted to finish with me. A massive blow emotionally … and also to my image (a university of technology with a male/female ratio of 9:1 – I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones!).
All the props in my life were being taken away.
Only now I knew why and what I had to do.

Why am I telling you this?

Because of a strange ‘global déjà vu’. It seems that across the world all the things that we use to prop our lives up have been taken away. Jobs, income, easily available food, foreign holidays, travel in general, meals out, socialising, health, even life itself and so on. The word ‘unprecedented’ is used in almost every announcement.
As far as the Western world goes, since the end of the second world war, we have lived though a period of peace and security not seen for ages. In comparison with previous generations, the threat and experience of untimely death has been largely absent. We have not been under threat of invasion, child mortality rates have dropped dramatically and, until now, illnesses have largely been under control. Obviously there are exceptions to this, but most people do not see dead bodies as part of their everyday experience.
But along the way, we have turned away from God.
The prevailing worldview is that God is unnecessary – he is not part of our lives because we think were managing without him.
And we’ve tried to take control of our lives by claiming our ‘rights’ to live as we please.
And now they’re been taken away.

That previous term a guy called Roger had called on me a few times trying to engage me in short Bible studies. Roger was a Christian and I tried to be nice to him, but wasn’t massively keen and attempted to fend him off with difficult questions. At the same time my friend Andy (not a Christian) had a book on his bookshelf which I asked if I could borrow. It was Basic Christianity by John Stott.

And that’s how I knew why those things were happening, and what I had to do.

Why? Because God had taken the props away. He wanted me to know that

What did I have to do? Kneel at my bedside and ask Jesus to come into my life. Which I did.
It wasn’t very dramatic. In fact apart from a profound sense of “I’m back”, not a great deal happened immediately. Though I knew I didn’t have to ask him again.
But when I ‘happened’ to meet Roger in a shop early in the Autumn term, I was astonished at my reaction to him. I was really pleased to see him! God had indeed done a work in me.
He introduced me to a Christian group and so my Christian life began to grow.

To the pandemic.
Why is it happening? I can’t claim to know the purposes of God . But I do know what the Bible says.
For instance – In Romans 1 Paul writes
¹⁹ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
There’s a lot in those verses, but in essence they’re saying that God is furious with sin – and high up on the list is a failure to honour God or to give thanks to him. An accurate description of our society.

What do we have to do?

Jesus opens his public ministry with these words:
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”
Repent. Change, turn around, turn back.

In Paul’s message in Athens he says (Acts 17):
³⁰ The times of ignorance ^jGod overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, ³¹ because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
God commands (that’s not a request) all people everywhere to repent. That word again.
And this is for real – we have the proof of Jesus’ resurrection.

So maybe God is speaking to the world. Of course he speaks to us all the time, but if we don’t listen, he has to shout.

C.S. Lewis wrote in 1940 “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Maybe we don’t associate shouting with something God does – but surely this is grace? He doesn’t have to, he could just leave us to perish in our sins. But 
God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
So maybe “Turn Back to God” should be our message. To ourselves, and also to to the world around us.

There are some early signs. It seems much easier to talk to people we don’t know (even if we have to shout across the street!). There seems to be a genuine concern for others. It’s started with the physical (Are you well? Are you getting shopping?), and moving to the emotional/mental (Are you coping?). The challenge is to move it on to the spiritual (Do you ever think about why this is happening? Have you ever wondered if God might have something to do with this?).
And there’s more.
Value is beginning to be placed on a person’s service, rather than their status. 

And the rainbow – a sign of God’s promise – is being recovered.