When the City Slept: NYC 2020
image by Claire Zasso
There is a line in “O Holy Night” that goes: a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.
While the weariness lingers everywhere these days, the hope and rejoicing feel a little harder to come by this year. When I am weary, I complain. It slips out of my mouth, almost subconsciously, and it has come much easier to me lately.
Maybe you also carry some bitterness over how 2020 shook out. Last New Year’s Eve, my family and I stood on our porch, watching the clouds of our breath materialize as we hollered out “Auld Lang Syne.” Who could have dreamed that less than seven weeks later the whole world would change?
2020 certainly was not at all what you or I expected, but I’ve noticed, as perhaps you have too, it has come with unexpected blessings. Maybe it was extra time with family, or more time to read, start learning a language, memorize Scripture, dance Bollywood-style, begin a Master's degree, train a puppy, or become a Zoom guru.
For me, it was a phone call on an April morning to assist a medical team responding to the overwhelming number of COVID-19 cases in New York. In a matter of weeks, the city’s virus caseload had eclipsed that of every other state in the U.S. Burdened hospital staff grew inundated with patients and they began asking for help.
The Quiet
As our almost vacant plane descended into the La Guardia airport, I looked out the window and saw a massive parking lot filled with hundreds of school buses. Like tiny yellow legos, they sat crammed up next to each other in neat rows with not a clue when they would be back on the road.
The abnormalities only became more apparent in the days that followed.
Shuttling doctors and nurses between the hotel and hospital, I drove an SUV down 5th and Madison Avenue several times a day, passing designer stores with merchandise still glowing in the windows—every last one closed. Some days, I could drive that car the length of Manhattan in thirty minutes or less. Talk about historical.
One night, some coworkers and I took a walk down to Times Square. We passed no one on our way there and when we arrived at the entrance, the whole place stood empty. Deserted. Not a soul was around but us. Even there, with all the screens and flashing lights turning night into day, it was quiet.
We were all trying to articulate this strange—almost sacred—sense, knowing we were experiencing NYC in a way hopefully no one ever will again. New York, for the first time since 9/11/2001, felt vulnerable.
On the morning of May 24th, New Yorkers who picked up their usual Sunday paper were shocked by the front page of the Times. Not a single image grounded their gaze. Instead, a headline: U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss. Below it were names. One thousand obituaries glimpsed at one sentence each, the whole page representing only 1% of the lives lost.
Sterling E. Matthews, 60, Midlothian Va., a cancer survivor who served as a deacon
Alby Kass, 89, California, lead singer of a Yiddish folk group
Roger Eckart, 78, Indiana, retired firefighter and old-school barber
Mary Minervini, 91, Oak Lawn, Ill., sign-language interpreter
Salomon S. Podgursky, 84, Morristown, N.J., loved to figure out how things worked
And so many others.
New York City in April 2020 was not the same loud, glittering city I met as a high school tourist. It was lonesome, quiet, even peaceful. This pandemic has been exposing and humbling for all of us, I believe, but seeing an entire city weary and grieving together was truly unprecedented. And yet, in this desperate moment, New Yorkers rose to the occasion.
image by Jillian Carver
The Resilience
Several times, volunteers from all different boroughs gathered to support our team in whatever way they could. A neighbor across the street brought his family’s bicycles and guitars for the doctors and nurses to use when they took breaks. Every Sunday night for weeks, one neighborhood a few streets away pitched in to cook us dinner. The most incredible Italian, Israeli, Korean, Thai, Indian, BBQ, you-name-it restaurants across the city showered donations of food on us day after day, meal after meal.
Tragedy often unites a community because it fades everything that divides us. In seasons like this, God’s mercy allows us to see each other as fellow image bearers. Even at a time when so little was known about the virus, New Yorkers were still found serving, offering what they had to help however they were able. Whenever we talked to local residents in passing—at the airport, the park, in restaurants, the hotel, the hospital, or churches—a tiredness loomed. It hung in their eyes, peeking over their masks, and lingering in their voices. But underneath shone a striking amount of resilience.
And every night at 7:00 PM, we listened while the community cheered for all the frontline workers fighting the virus. Uptown, a truck with giant speakers blared the voice of Frank Sinatra singing, “New York, New York—I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps…” Waiting at a stoplight in a sparse intersection one evening, I watched people come out on their balconies and lean out of apartment windows. They rang bells, blew air horns, and banged pots and pans, reminding those working second or third shifts how thankful we were for them.
The Hope
Over the course of the five weeks I spent in NYC, I met over one hundred doctors and nurses, all of whom left the safety of their hometowns to serve the people of New York. Every morning, they climbed into my SUV, we drove through empty streets, and I watched them walk toward the hospital for another long, sometimes tragic, day. They knew exactly what they would face behind those doors. I saw it carved on their faces, driving them back to the hotel at the end of a shift. But every morning, they were there on the sidewalk waiting for me. Ready for another day. It was nothing less than the spirit of God in them—not “a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment” (2 Tim. 1:7).
One doctor in particular I will never forget. In 2014, she spent months treating patients in Liberia during the Ebola virus epidemic. In a quiet moment outside the hospital, I asked her: what did you learn during Ebola that has been helpful to you now? She paused for a moment and then smiled: “When we were fighting Ebola, we thought we were all going to die. Our entire medical staff, we thought we were all going to contract Ebola and die. But we didn’t. God brought us through that season, every last one of our staff. Eventually, a vaccine was developed and now people don’t have to die from it. I think God is asking us to do the same thing now that He asked of us then: trust He will bring us through.”
Before going to New York, most of the voices in my community echoed uncertainty, frustration and fear. Few had urged me to surrender my anxious thoughts to God. During those days in the city, the Lord brought me a surprising amount of peace about the future.
In the last few weeks of this harsh year, many around you will be complaining and the 2020 bashing will get real. I ask you to respond differently: amid the “toils and snares,” what has God taught you this year? Have you leaned into Him or further away? Where have you witnessed His faithfulness to you and yours, even now?
As we enter this Christmas season, be reminded we serve the God who brought an entire nation out of slavery in Egypt. Who, against all odds, kept that minority tribe alive and intact for centuries. Who gave a small crew of uneducated fishermen the task of carrying the best news in human history to the ends of the earth. The same God who turned one Roman death sentence on a cross into the greatest victory of eternity.
Sing this with me for a second:
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.
For yonder breaks a new, glorious morning.
When Jesus arrived and angels boomed the news to the shepherds, dawn broke on centuries of waiting in darkness. “Till he appeared and the soul felt it’s worth.” Because Jesus came, I know what I am worth to God: He sent His Son, traded His life for mine. Jesus came and I know I am LOVED by the God who made the universe. Does that not thrill your heart?
It doesn’t change the pain or sadness of this year; the weight of it feels the same. But I am changed.
The weary world rejoices.
We are weary indeed, but looking at Jesus—who made the blind see, the lame walk, the captives free, the hungry fed, the outcasts accepted, who was killed on a cross and walked out of the grave, conquering death once for all—we rejoice.
Lord God, help us to trust that here, even now, you are able to accomplish far more with the ashes of 2020 than we could ever ask or imagine. We believe. Help our unbelief.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Zasso was born and raised in California with many books and mountain air. Currently, she works for a Christian international relief organization, supporting hurricane recovery programs. She loves coffee, scuba diving, leading worship with her guitar, hiking in the Sierra Nevadas, jamming to classic rock, and showing others the freedom found in knowing Jesus.