In retrospect, the horror of watching the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris collapse into billowing flames was just a foretaste of horrors to come.
Live news coverage of the fire at Notre-Dame—which happened a year ago this month—felt like something out of an apocalyptic movie. It was the bracing experience of watching centuries of human achievement, beauty, and resilience come crashing down into a pile of ashen rubble.
But that experience is now the new normal. I feel it almost daily—the surreal, out-of-body, wake-me-up-from-the-nightmare sense that we are living in an apocalyptic movie.
But it's real. And it's painful. And we are right to weep.
We weep for our loved ones who have lost someone to the virus, or lost their job, or lost their small business dream, or lost their planned wedding or conference or vacation. We’ve all lost something.
We weep for the racism on display in this crisis, and the ugly Darwinian hoarding, and the dumpster fire that is the "what to trust?" information glut online. We weep because all this testifies to the truth that we actually deserve this calamity—however bad it gets.
If this crisis eventually ends and we are somehow spared, it will be a mercy we don’t deserve.
But that’s what makes Good Friday so good. The bleak, bloody, dark reality of this day is a reminder of the mercy God showed us by not sparing his own son (Rom. 8:32). We are spared because Jesus wasn’t.
Death is very near. Everything falls apart. No one can evade suffering. We are dust. These are lessons COVID-19 is making painfully clear. Like the spire of Notre-Dame, society is imploding, and with it our many hopes, dreams, and plans. Soon it might all be reduced to a pile of ashen rubble.
But on Good Friday—which marks another moment in history when life’s tragic fragility was almost unbearable—we take odd comfort in the fact that we are helpless to rescue ourselves. God must intervene to save us, to make any sense of hope possible. Only God can save us. And, remarkably and most graciously, he did.
This growing darkness, this spreading disease, this immense pain, this lifeless body collapsing into the arms of the grieving. This unspeakable pain. This creeping dread. This ____.
This too shall pass.