The Gift of Coronavirus

People Who Are at Higher Risk for Severe Illness | CDC

The million dollar question is when things will get back to normal.  I hope never.

Here's what I mean.  Last week, I posted in a Temecula facebook group the following:  "Can you share one positive thing the current situation has brought into your life?"

The post currently has 521 comments and counting.  Don't get me wrong.  Coronavirus is terrible and I personally know people who have gotten it (and by extension, some who have passed away).  However, Hashem runs the world in a way that blessings and the opposite of blessings usually come in an inseparable way.

There's an amazing book called "The Power of Habit" which I recommend you buy and read.  Commercial research has shown that people are more likely to change the brand of orange juice they drink after a birth, move, divorce etc. because when big change happens, habits are interrupted, and create room for new ones.  In our conversation, coronavirus has disrupted our routines and made the room for new ones.

Personally, in the past few weeks, I've been learning much more Torah than I have in years passed.  I've always felt guilty about not learning more, but whenever I tried to increase my learning time, things always seemed to come up.  Since coronavirus, I've already completed a tractate of talmud that I started 8 years ago, just after Chanaleh was born!  Coronavirus has also created other new routines, allowing me to spend more time with my family. 

I wish that Coronavirus goes away forever, but I resolve that the blessings it has brought into my life will not disappear with the virus.

As a friend related last week:  "As a student of history, I had a very hard time believing in Moshiach.  Kings, empires, technologies and ideas rise and fall, but the human condition seems to stay the same.  To think that the world could permanently change is something I had a hard time believing...  Until a few days ago.  The change that coronavirus has brought to the world has opened my mind to the possibility that real, permanent change is possible."

This is unbelievable!  Our prophets tell us that Moshiach is going to be a process.  It's not going to be an overnight bailout, like Egypt was.  But it will happen, and the world will change in a way that is so real and permanent, that it will never go back to the way things were for the first 5,780 years of creation.

Are you in?  What positive change has coronavirus brought into your life that will stay with you forever? 

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