COVID 19, Its Overall Effects in My Life

The Covid-19 is one of the memorable happened in all over the world, on how individual
became strong from this kind of pandemic. I know that every individual learned different kinds
of lessons and I believe that even there are difficulties in our situation, this crisis teach us to
make us realize that “There is a Time for Everything” found in Ecclesiastes chapter three were
only God is the superior of everything. Maybe, there is a time we asked God, why it happened?
Or we asked for the miracle that God will stop this pandemic but there is no answer. We are
aware that we cannot see our enemies, and until when we will fight for this, what we should do
right now? And what are the positive and negative effects of this pandemic to our life?

Honestly, COVID 19 is become one of the instruments of the Lord for me to experience
the things that I cannot do. First, to minister my family. Every day, I’m praying that hopefully
the time will come that I can share with them the word of God, and because I can’t go to
Church, God used me to minister my Family like having worship service in our home. Secondly,
having time with my Family, I am glad that we experience this crisis. God make us realize on
how important the family is, maybe I’m not the only one who think this, but maybe God allow
this to happened to spent time with each other, because we enjoy and appreciate simple things
in our life, this pandemic teaches us that a simple celebration can also be memorable, were we
don’t need to go outside in order to celebrate like birthday and mother’s day, etc. Then, to have
God. This is one of the important lessons in my life that I have God in my life. I spent more
time with God in midst of crisis and experience His faithfulness, this is an opportunity to get
closer to God by reading and meditating His words. Another benefit of this pandemic is the
impact on environment. Since land, air and sea transportations are suspended, it helps our
environment to avoid from different pollutions. Reducing air pollution can reduce climate
change and health risk, and as pollutions are being prevented, our environment slowly take
time to heal and flourish. The operations in some factories that are operating also aid our
environment. Hence, this pandemic can be considered as a wake-up call to us that we should
protect and love our environment as we love and protect ourselves. Then the positive result
also are the volunteers to serve the people and all over the world by giving their strength to
serve others, by giving donations to help everyone. And, this is the time for me to have self-
reflection about my behavior and take time to rest, relax and exercise. Truly I can say that we
are blessed because we have God who gave everything, He provides all we needed everyday
and I am proudly to say that our needs are enough and too much. These are the part of
positive effects of COVID 19 in my life and there are so much more I want to thank about this
situation.

If there are advantages of COVID 19, of course there are disadvantages effects of this
pandemic. First, the worship service in every Church are affected. The presence of the Lord is
everywhere, but the Church is a place for us to have Fellowship with Him and as a body.
Secondly, others say that we will having a more time to do our requirements, but as students,
we are in the middle of semester that there are lessons that not yet discuss, and not all
students can connect to the internet and to have self-study. Another drawback of this pandemic
is the economic crisis. Philippines, as one of the developing countries which is also considered
as a poor country are now suffering from funds. For almost two months, many parts in Luzon
are under General Community Quarantine (GCQ) and Modified Enhanced Community
Quarantine (MECQ). Since millions of people are under quarantine, lot of Filipinos have no
income to support their necessities. So, the government release billion peso to the LGU’s to give
relief goods and ameliorate their suffering from temporarily losing their jobs. We can also notice
that other malls are not operating due to this pandemic, in this case our country resulted in a
subdued growth for the economy in 2020. The more the pandemic brought widespread job
losses, the more our economy is in risk. COVID-19 from the Wuhan, China also risk our country
in terms of tourism. Our country quickly increase income because we have lots of tourist
attraction here, but due to this pandemic, domestic and international flights including land, air,
and sea are suspended. Also, those non-residents are not allowed to go home to prevent the
virus from spreading. Aside from that, COVID-19 has also an impact in different businesses.
One of the examples is the export of products to some countries which are suspended to
prevent the spread of the coronavirus to other countries. According to the article that I have
read, mining operations of two companies in Surigao del Norte are also suspended from April 1,
2020. Additional to the negative effects of Covid-19, some Filipinos are being abused like the
news about to our front liners, then Health risk because this pandemic affects millions of people
and died which also increases the mortality rate. There are lot of negative effects of this
pandemic, but this is not the end, there is Hope after this challenges.

Those things I mentioned above are the positive and negative effects that I experienced
toward COVID-19, and I want also to give important the technology we have today that
became instrument to help everyone while were battling in this kind of pandemic. The cause of
lockdown of every country is COVID 19 and declaring Quarantine or to stay at home, but it is
not meaning that our life will stop, because the technology became useful to continue our task.
Let us imagine, if technology is not present, how we will become aware to the situation of our
surroundings right now? We believe or not, technology is becoming part of our life, especially it
helps us to solve different kinds of problems like what we experienced today. Technology
became helpful to the experts to discover the virus we have and explain what the effects of this
in human health and what are the symptoms. Because this is a kind of virus, there are
technologies like A.I To detect the spread of an epidemic, Interactive maps for monitoring to
tract the reported cases, New tech foe faster detection which is diagnostic etc. that helps our
frontlines to check every individual if they are infected or not. Then, technology became key to
continue our task. There are a lot organization that was cancelled to have event, especially
having worship service in our Church but because of the technology, our ministry are still
working, like, Live stream are useful to share the word of God and continue to celebrate the
day of the Lord as one even we are in our home, and also the Zoom app in our smart phone, it
help us to communicate our family, relatives, and friends. Then, our studies our affected
because the schools were cancelled to have class, but even we are in Home, we can have
online study and pass our requirements. Another is, we are aware about the situation all over
the world, there are news, updates and we have seen on how became leader our front liners
from different sectors. There are also people give their donation through online and the receiver
can monitor it, so it became easy for them to measure the amount of their fund that they will
donate also.

Until now, the experts are still looking for the antidote using technology in different
kinds of experiments and netizen are still waiting for the updates of the results. Truly that small
microorganism can destroy everything if people are not aware. During this pandemic, a lot of
people will realize, that we are weak, we cannot solve this crisis in our own strength because
we are only human, limited, and powerless. At the end, we will realize that we need each of
one, we need to become one to help each other, we need one heart, one voice and one mind
to call to God, because He is only one can stop this crisis. What we experienced today is part of
His plan, but to die the world is not His plan, because He will not let His nations to be in ruin.
Like what I always putting in my mind, there is time for everything, we are not forever will live
in this world, there is time to speak, to laugh, to love, to heal, for peace and to born, on the
other hand, there is time to be in silent, to weep, to hate, for war and to die, but everything
has a purpose, everything has ending except to the Words and promises of our Lord. God
wants us to realize everything what we did, our sins, he wants to teach us how life is important.
So, let us look this COVID 19 in a positive side not just only for the negative, because it brings
us Hope, Faith and Love, Yes there is scars but this kind of scars tells us that we are blessed,
because until now we are alive and that scars is part of our life. One of the message that I
heard from livestream is the phrase that, maybe God doesn’t want to change our situation
because He wants us to realize that there is something to change in our life, He didn’t stop this
pandemic for us to be changed, maybe the way we live in our everyday life. Today we are in a
situation of hardship, let us remember that there is tomorrow, and the Lord is the one who
holds tomorrow, He already answer our questions and prayer to Him, let us wait and trust in
Him everything, for He is in control and he will do it in His perfect timing.