Quarantine

The President has called for social distancing guidelines to continue through April 30, and issued a prediction that the next two weeks will be the toughest.  People – especially the kids – are getting “cabin fever” as we use to call it, and in some places there is little evidence that anything has changed.

People are taking the health threat seriously enough to empty store shelves, though, and the panic buying is unnecessary according to most experts.  But some tend to believe the worst, that the supply trucks will stop coming, the stores will close, and we’ll all end up without basic necessities (like toilet paper) and be forced to lives of desperation.

Yet there is so much compassion and caring being shown, people caring for each other, making this troubled time a little easier for each other, and being “together” in ways that still follow the guidelines.  A report of kids coming out on their drives in their neighborhood and saying the pledge of allegiance.  Singers and musicians performing on the porches of loved ones, (this also occurred in Italy and other countries) and churches holding “parking lot prayer meetings” and “drive-through communion.”  Home schooling is being practiced more than ever, along with schools providing online classes and projects.

Americans are very resilient.  Hopefully this pandemic will help teach our children and grandchildren – who have never lived though anything like this – that we can persevere, we can come through this with integrity and hope and love.  They can learn there is a God who cares about them, who gives them strength and courage and wisdom.  They can learn that faith is the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11)  They can learn that faith in Jesus Christ really is the “substance” and the “evidence” and is sufficient to get them through whatever comes their way.

Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica (2 Thess. ch. 2)

¹⁵ So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

¹⁶ May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, ¹⁷ encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

Hebrews 10:

¹⁹ Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, ²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. ²³ Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵ not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

In this time of “being apart” we have not given up meeting together, but we are able to gather in different ways as we continue to be faithful and encourage one another and show our children and grandchildren God is faithful, He will never forsake us, and we CAN trust in and depend on Him.