I saved a church bulletin from the last time my church gathered physically: March 8, 2020. As I write, it’s now early September.

Did we even begin to know in March that half a year later we would still be meeting by Facebook and Zoom?

We thought perhaps until the end of May—then June. But, no, here we are in the beginning of autumn, school starting—whatever that means anymore—we still don’t feel free to physically gather.

Pastor Noel Van Niel sums up our feelings of loss in “The Church Is Other People” in Plough Quarterly, August, 2020. Talking of the church and ministry, he says “we are primarily in the people business . . . . God is to be experienced more fully in community and connection.”

And so we experience this deep sense of loss: “. . . we are left with a desire that cannot be met. An absence that cannot be filled. A yearning that is perpetual.”

Yet, Van Niel says, we may now better understand “those who live in a perpetual state of longing for what is denied them—peace, justice, equality, safety—all those whose deepest needs remain unmet.”

Perhaps our own unmet needs prepare us “for an even fuller future than we could have imagined before we had to close our doors.”

We wait with faith and longing for the day when we can gather. Not only those of us who, until the pandemic, were free to gather without fear. We also wait with those who have never been able to gather with complete security.