What has lockdown left us thinking?

It is safe to say that life has changed dramatically in the last two years. The virus and the lockdowns have caused us to question many things. In the long hours that we’ve spent at home, we’ve had time to reflect on the world’s circumstances and to think about things we probably didn’t give much thought to before. Loneliness and relationships, life and death, meaning and purpose.

At Cornerstone Church, we recently finished a three-session course that gave people the opportunity to explore what the Bible says about those things.

Loneliness and Relationships

The pandemic has had a huge impact on our view of relationships. We have never cherished time with family members, friends or work colleagues, so much.

The British Red Cross commissioned a poll of 2,000 adults in the UK in March 2021. Its findings revealed that around two in five (39%) of adults don’t think their feelings of loneliness will go away after the pandemic is over.

In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the author records that God saw that ‘it was not good for a person to be alone’ (Genesis 2:18).

A closer look at Genesis 3 shows that our relationships with each other and with God have been broken and damaged by our desire to be like God. That is the root of loneliness. Our relationship with God, our Creator, isn’t as it should be.

Life and Death

In a recent Guardian article entitled ‘How do faithless people like me make sense of this past year of Covid?’ the journalist, John Harris writes:

When it comes to mortality, we have relatively few social institutions that allow us to talk about it.

In everyday life, it is hard to talk about death. But this year, as the death toll was continually rising and the numbers were plastered all across our screens, it was difficult to avoid the subject. Alongside that, many people have developed health anxiety. They have been afraid of sickness and death. The Bible tells us what we instinctively know – death is an intruder. An alien. An imposter. An executioner of hope.

Meaning and Purpose

As the year of lockdown has gone on, we have seen what our lives look like with all the distractions stripped away. With so much time on our hands, we have been caused to reflect on what really matters.

Many of us look for purpose and meaning in things like work, family, hobbies – but the Bible raises our eyes to something deeper and more significant. It tells us we were made to live according to God’s purpose, to be stewards of his creation and be his image bearers, with him as our King.

This means, when everything else is stripped away, Christians can hold fast to the fact that we were made for a relationship and a purpose that is not defined by our circumstances and we don’t have to search endlessly to find it.

What’s the solution?

Above all else, the answer to all of these big ideas is Jesus Christ.

Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, our relationship with God is restored, we will be raised to life with Christ when our earthly bodies pass away and our meaning is found in following him. All this is yours, if you trust in him.

If you didn’t have the opportunity to join the Explore course, (or you did and you want to know more), contact a staff member about attending the King and I: a three week follow-up course looking at the teachings of Jesus and the good news at the heart of the Christian faith.