Coronavirus and Depression/Anxiety

Nationwide quarantine, virus outbreak, and social distancing… Not very exciting words here, and we are experiencing them all at once. Psychology fields are paying attention to people’s mental and emotional state and many are saying that people will (if they haven’t already) experience anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. I want to be honest with the situation that we are facing, but as a follower of Jesus Christ, I have the absolute confidence in Him. 

The Reality of our Circumstances

The reality of quarantine, virus outbreak, and social distancing can be ugly. It is all very real to us, from the unknown time period of quarantine, to the fear of the virus outbreak coming closer to where we live. We are feeling anxiety toward losing family members and friends, anxiety toward financial crisis, depression from loneliness, depression from things taken away, confusion from an abnormal life, and many more emotions. I am not sure what you are feeling today, but some of you may be feeling a tremendous amount on your shoulders. You might be carrying many heavy emotions within you that you feel like you are going to explode. What I want you to know is that these heavy emotions, the reality that you are facing, is okay. It is normal. God gave us our brain and intentionally wired us in a way that we feel different emotions. Feeling emotions is a crucial part of who we are and how we are created. If you do not feel any type of emotion in the midst of this quarantine, you are either heavily confused and need some time to dissect what you are feeling, or you are a robot. One of the things that scientists are struggling with in Artificial Intelligent Development is that they don’t know how to wire an A.I. to have emotions.

Thankfully, we are not artificially designed, but ratherintelligently designed by our loving Creator. It is perfectly fine if you are feeling emotionally heavy, but the power we have asChristians is that we can give our emotions over to Christ. We see this example over and over through different people in the Scriptures, especially in Psalms. We can rejoice in the Lord always, not because we are happy and giddy 24/7, but because the Lord is near to us and we can cast our emotions to Him. Through this, we can have hope in a hopeless situation. 

Confidence in Hope

So as Christ-followers, in the midst of thisCoronavirus, we must respond with hopefulness. Jesus Christ is our Hope; therefore, we can live with confidence. Yes, many negative things are going on around us, but in Him, we can respond confidently with hopefulness. But what does that look like? How does that look like in our life? We have to take Paul’s famous statement, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain” very seriously, and apply it. Christ is our living Hope! As we give our circumstances to God, we can move on from just being filled with our emotions, and fill our hearts with joy, satisfaction, and pleasure that only comes from our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s be honest with the reality, let’s recognize our emotions, let’s cast out our emotions to God, and then, move on. Move on to what? Move on to ministry. We have one purpose in our life, and that is proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ through loving God with everything we have and loving our neighbors as ourselves. This mission, this purpose will not change no matter what is happening in this world, nor what we are experiencing. The powerful truth of Jesus Christ must be shared, especially in difficult times. Nothing should stop us from our continuous work of proclaiming the Gospel.

Conclusion

I think when we look at people like the Apostle Paul, how they lived their lives for Jesus no matter their circumstances, we often look at them as different from us. There is no way we can be like them! Satantries to convince us that we can never become steadfast like them. But Peter and John were called “ordinary men” in Acts 4:13, yet people saw boldness in Peter and John. We are ordinary people, but as followers of Jesus Christ, let’s become people with hope, people with courage, people with one mission.

Let’s be honest with the reality; let’s recognize our emotions; let’s cast out our emotions to God, and let’s move on to our continuous work of proclaiming Jesus’ name.