I was so impressed with how quickly this book was released when Coronavirus first hit and we all went into lockdown. I’m not so impressed with how long it’s taken me to read it, but that’s entirely my fault and not a reflection of the book!

As you would guess from the title, the book talks us through how to correlate our faith with the coronavirus pandemic in a healthy way, when the atmosphere around is is the complete opposite, and we might be tempted to draw away from God.

Split into 20 chapters, each is written by a different contributor and brings a different specialism and knowledge to the situation. Chapters like work, marriage, singleness, grief and loneliness.

And although it’s written by 20 different people, it flows really well and reads as a cohesive book rather than just separate articles, which was really nice. I think the reason it took so long for me to read is because a lot of the topics felt really close to home and I wasn’t ready to read it.

We come to appreciate more than ever the wonder inherent in simple things like friendship, walks in the park, holidays, hugging or even just going to the pub.

As you would imagine, each chapter is filled with biblical knowledge, pointing us towards the God who is with us in these unprecedented times:

Because Christ came to remove from us the tyranny of the fear of death (Heb. 2:14–15), we can live in confident hope, carry out our daily tasks and selflessly serve others even in the most trying times.

It also challenges us to draw closer to God rather than pulling away, choosing prayer rather than anger to get us through the crisis.

As we seek to love others through this time, perhaps the most useful weapon in our arsenal is one of the simplest. We have a clear and direct line to God. He always hears our prayers, so let us be a praying people.

I’m not going to individually review each chapter, because I think if you’ve got this far into the review, you should probably pick up a copy of the book and check it out – the kindle version was pretty cheap last time I looked.

I think while obviously written and focused on the coronavirus times, the book will be a useful reference when we hopefully get through this to the other side. Chapters like the one on the Psalms are a good guide for all times, not just in a pandemic, so I see myself returning to this book again in the future, hopefully when my head (and the world) is in a better place.