Empty City

These photos are haunting -- images of NYC during the pandemic.

They are both sad and encouraging -- sad because this crises has literally changed the face and look of the city but also encouraging because it shows that New Yorkers are taking it seriously and doing the right thing by "social distancing."

I never thought I'd see the city so barren, so empty, so drained of life. Streets with no cars or people, closed storefronts, plazas and open spaces vacant, a sprinkle of pedestrians here and there wearing facemasks -- a city of concrete and steel, haunted by ghosts, devoid of its great spirit.

There's nothing eerier than a big, empty, abandoned city.

Recently I was reading C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew (part of The Chronicles of Narnia) to my oldest daughter. There's a brilliant, chilling part of the book where two children suddenly find themselves transported into another world -- specifically, a once great city, now dead and crumbling, frozen in time. They walk through buildings and courtyards, deadly silent, before they happen upon an area with men and women, dressed like nobles, sitting in chairs, who have been turned into statues. Through dark magic one of the people, a woman, rises from the dead -- and all hell breaks loose. It's great storytelling and, as it turned out, deeply prophetic.

But we are not a city of statues, not yet. We live within ourevels. NYC will rise again better than ever!