What lessons have we learned as a society and what temporary changes might be long-lasting?

Being driven indoors and isolated from group activities has changed daily lives for many people. It would seem it has been long enough to have changed some habits and also to create new habits.

How about attending church? Are you growing comfortable with the efforts of your favorite place of worship being held in a remote context? Are you enjoying sitting back in your pajamas and sipping coffee while you listen to the message? Have you stopped missing the interactions with other believers? It isn’t the same singing along to a hymn in your home or reciting a creed or well-known prayer, is it?

The least favorite aspect is the obligatory request for funding. Having watched and witnessed some of the old-time preachers pressure followers with threats that God would take the pastor “home” if he didn’t raise more money or pleading for watchers to place their hands on the TV set against his hands and have the spirit pass through the airwaves and into them for salvation, we see these pleas as mild but still uncomfortable.

Will the local churches go back to previous services, or are we going to have a new normal for church services? It would be very surprising if people would continue to support virtual ministries as well as they supported a congregation in person. The old church as we knew it will need to provide more for their congregations to win them back.

School districts might have been changed forever. Some parents have found enjoyment in having the kids at home and participating in the education of them. More are anxiously awaiting the day the school buses reappear.

The need for kids to be up and out of bed early has disappeared, for now, and the students will have had nearly six months of vacation-time sleeping in. Not one parent that we know of is keeping their child in school-shape by getting them up at the previous time they would to catch the school bus. The longer the kids sleep the more time out the parent gets.

Parents are doing their best to have the students keep up with the primary subjects they would have at school. As a not-so-recent college graduate (43 years, give or take a little) it is unimaginable that we could do justice to explaining even the easiest of math above the fifth- or sixth-grade level.

And science would never be the same if our ability to remember the lessons we learned were to be relied upon for lesson planning.

With no warning of how abruptly this school year would end, teachers had no chance to prepare their classes for the long absence of formal education.

That probably means a failed year for most students. Not meaning they have to attend an extra calendar year, but it means the system of education and the way it is structured has had such a profound body slam that recovery is going to take a year to get them back where they were.

Students and teachers will experience frustration like never before. We hope this layoff doesn’t also result in a huge bump in dropouts.

Parents may not have the same attitude about pushing kids back into attendance and study mode. High school seniors and college underclassmen may drop from the class rolls in significant numbers. Paychecks may become more important than future aspirations. That would be a terrible result of COVID-19.

What other changes have been seeded? Will people shy away from mass transit? Will Uber and other services disappear before they become a deep part of society?

How many restaurants won’t be back? Can GrubHub and other deliveries end the need for the fine art of dining out? Will government force things like $15 per hour minimum wage harder now that the workers have received compensation from the government in excess of what the businesses have been willing or able to pay?

Do you expect people to go back to work and give up unemployment benefits that exceed the paycheck they had been receiving before the socialist, stimulus checks came out? Much change is in the air, and while we hope Queen Corona blows away in the wind like Mary Poppins did, we expect many adjustments will need to be made in our lives.

Buckle up because the ride is about to start.