Before I begin, I want to start with a disclaimer: If the topic of religion offends you or someone sharing their personal opinion about religion offends you in any way, PLEASE DO NOT READ.

Since January 2020, I have had this strange feeling that God (YHWH, Jehovah) was trying to get our attention. It did not feel normal when New Year’s came in this year. I didn’t cook my normal New Years Day meal. It just did not feel like last year. The anticipation for a new year, new me was sidelined by a weird feeling. Fast forward to January 9th, as I do every day, I visited my normal news aggregators. CNN showed more promise that day because I saw this mysterious pneumonia being reported from China. I have to admit, I was nervous about the potential of such a virus coming to our shores. Even though we have a President that should be capable of protecting us, it still worried me. Chinese New Year was approaching and here comes a disease that is affecting people in China. I wondered if restrictions would be placed. At that point, I started to worry. This virus sounded like the virus I wrestled with in the first 3 months of 2019. I don’t want to ever feel like that again. My vision hasn’t come back completely due to it.

Once March came along, more reports of this virus in the US spread, I could see people on television and social media brushing off COVID like it was the common cold or the flu. I thought to myself, this thing is super pneumonia, not the flu. Have these people ever had the flu? Have they ever experienced pneumonia? On a day that is normally a good luck day for me, Friday, March 13th, the President declared a national emergency regarding COVID-19. If you were in my home that day, you would have heard cheers of jubilation from my children and screams of terror for me. Panic ensued within me. All I could think about was, God, what are you trying to tell us? 

Then I started thinking about the different pastors and spiritual leaders that seem to play a part in this saga. I remember seeing posts from different churches singing the praises of the President, and alongside them were there loyal parishioners, touting their praises for Trump as well. I have seen more Christians idolizing this man, and I don’t think they are aware of this. Maybe God is trying to tell us that we have broken His commandments one too many times and we all are experiencing His wrath. I’m going to stop here because I do not want anyone thinking that I am trying to come up with a conspiracy or speak ill on religious leaders. That is something that I am not trying to do. I just want the people in the Christian world to stop and think for a second: could you be doing something that is displeasing to God? Have we been so delusional that maybe, just maybe, we all have angered God?

I know some people do not believe in God or science. Your life, your rules. But I am just witnessing a chain of events happening that seems to become worst the closer we get to the end of the year. I don’t know whether to say Lord forgive me or Jumanji when January 1, 2021 rolls in. What I do know is this: I feel religion has a part to play in this (again, my opinion). Too much is happening to ignore it. I think God has been pushed to the brink, and we as humans are feeling the effects of it.