My second greatest post-pandemic fear, is that “things will go back to normal”. That when we come out like bears from hibernation we’ll go back to fighting, back to spending obscene amounts on ourselves, back to idolatry, back to apostasy, back to doing good that’s self-serving, back to filling our individual worlds with stuff so we can like ourselves a little more, back to the Lord with songs of sorrow and posting another essay into the abyss. What will this new normal look like? Will it be a brand new utility truck filled with the same old debris of disappointments? What should the new normal look like? I’m glad you asked, because I have absolutely no idea.

I’ve been accused of ‘over-sharing’. Not sure what that means. Maybe too much personal information? As far as I’m aware no one knows my bank PIN number and the reason I know is that the ten dollars I got for my scapegoat is still in my account. So it must be something else. Maybe too much emotion, too much truth or too many questions? Maybe I hit a nerve with too much verve. Maybe me skinny ass shin accidentally kicked and broke a leg on someone’s couch causing a knot in the neck of their Netflix nitpicking. Perhaps I went and stuck a stick into their bicycle spokes while they were cyclopsing? So in the spirit of the new normal I’ll slide that comment into my peripherals and keep going in the hope I do not offend any of even my closest friends.

Nothing like a virus to do an audit. “Go to your rooms and think about the destruction you’ve wreaked in the living room. And when you come out after you’ve sulked, fix the broken window, the cracked Telly, wash the soda-stained carpet and clean the crayon off the walls.” Of course that’s not bound to happen. Our problems are bigger than the ‘Ruby Princess’ now dubbed the ‘Grubby Princess’ – that floating Corona petri-dish, a microcosm of our very own groaning sickly-pale blue dot. Passing through the valley of death wasn’t as fierce nor the farce we had hoped it would be, even though we seem to have gone from “predator” to “prey” at the flick of a light switch. Nor did it usher in the rambunctious rapture. But it was unnerving. The reaper reaped and the death angel culled without starting a war this time around, but leaving just as many bruised and battered hearts in their wake for the loss of so many loved ones. “We mourn our losses but never our doubts” sings Andy Squyres citing Job. Which leaves the rest of us all jittery with our Gatling guns pointed at our front doors the target of the zombie apocalypse… any moment now. Let me know if I’m over-sharing.

It’s true what amorphous ‘they’ say; film is an escape. Television stories are for me like dreaming. Now with Amazon prime it appears that I dream quite a lot. But lately I stare through my retinas, across the short sparkly dusty distance through to the glass and the plasma on the other side at the skeletons inside the dancing narratives. My PTSD for working seventeen years in the film industry – story structures. What should the world look like in the new normal? What knocked it off balance? And what can be done to put it right? Three simple questions begging for three complimentary and uncomplicated answers. 

Surprisingly the answers are not quite the hour length episode of westworld drama that’s popped into my head I was expecting, but more of an excruciating 20 minute train documentary. I must be getting tired, or more skilled at cutting through the clutter. The world should be better, more specifically people should be kinder, not get sick, old and die. What is it that inciting incident, that intoxicating virus that continually knocks us off balance? Sin. The wickedness buried down inside of us a type of spiritual cancer. The motor to the physical body. What’s the cure? Who’s that vociferous vaccine? Jesus Christ. Knowing him. A lifelong endeavor, which isn’t very long at all when we consider life is just long enough for an interview. Dress smart. Speak well.

We say it so often that we think no one is listening. It washes over us until we lie down like Elijah and pray to the Lord for a quick death. There’s absolutely no reason for you to believe a word I say. To believe that there is any benefit to having Jesus Christ in your life. You have no time for him because he’s kicking eyeballs in the back yard of some other, more poverty-stricken nation. I’m inoculated against Christianity you say. The heart of the gospel is far off sailing on some other sea, you say. The Mexican wave is well, in Mexico, you say. You have no more time for reading because your eyeballs are fixated on Instagram, filled with Facebook and taunted by Tik Tok bubbles endlessly bursting little moments of dopamine delights. Peppy little bromides, who has time for Jesus, until you are sick old or dying, or in love. Which brings me to my first and biggest post-pandemic fear – that I shall lose my spark, my desire, excitement and zeal for the One whom I adore and love more than life itself. That I might stop shedding tears every time I hear his name whispered. Please bury my heart underneath a soft blanket of evening snow if I ever do.

As I write this I’m rekindling my adoration for the one I married. I have not yet told her but I have in silence renewed my vows and like a pondering sower I’m flicking ‘I love you’ seeds in her wake more often at various times and in different locations to where I normally would. I’ve employed Jesus juice to curb my brooding irritations and with renewed vigor affirmed my appreciation for her. She might know now. My aim is to continue providing her a peaceful and beautiful environment for her to flourish in. Regrettably I have at times in the past failed to do so and I want to make it right. My desire is to give her a beautiful home and world like I know my God and Christian families are invested in doing. I know they are hard at work in providing a new normal for our new post-pandemic, post-everything world. Let me know if I’m over-sharing, cuz honestly, I can’t tell.

Every morning at 5:30am I go for my morning walk, to fill my ears with God my Father. Some time during my trudge up Milson’s hill I look up at the starry sky and like a child in the back seat of my soul cry out: “are we there yet?” Yes, I wish we were there already. A better world. Don’t you?

A full length episode of westworld can never be as satisfying as an eternity of peaceworld. Our definition of what the new normal in our new world should be is, contrary to popular belief, NOT up to us, no matter what the loudest secular cultural slave has to say. Their eternal deaths should convince us they cannot be trusted. As Dr Vernon McGee writes; “God tends to do what He pleases because it’s His universe. We might have a better way, but we don’t have a universe.” That definition of what the world should look like belongs to the One who lives forever. Who has been here long before we arrived, and will remain long after we’ve gone and rested a while, before we come together under the tree of life, in our eternal embrace.