Washington State’s Governor announced an extended quarantine, until May 4th.
But even then, it sounds like quarantine may extend past that date. Boeing just shut down “until further notice” and there are rumors of everything stopping until July.
I drive by Providence Medical Center in Everett. The place of the first known case of Coronavirus in America. New tents are placed outside to house patients…
They weren’t there last week…
I start to wonder if there is another invisible virus that is worse than the Coronavirus, plaguing our nation.
Fear caused Peter to renounce Jesus, The Rich Young Ruler took his wealth and missed out on what Jesus offered…
But fear was never the character of a true Christian.
Fear and faith aren’t meant to be married. Fear is the diving board that leads us into deeper waters, where Jesus lives and lives are changed.
“It only takes a mustard seed…” My friend reminds me on the phone the other day.
Yet, I race into this grocery store, and stack the food in two catagories on the conveyer belt.
“GET BACK,” I hear the cashier shout.
Startled, frightened, I looked around as if a snyper was about to blast a round of bullets.
Bullets came. But they were not from some automatic weapon. They came from the mouth of a grocery cashier who had rules in place and didn’t appreciate my ignorance.
Where has kindness gone? Smiles? Time spent really looking into the eyes of those around us?
I walk through the isles, cart filled, just a few moments earlier. People with masked swoop in a big, semi-circle around me, as if the world might end.
But I get it, the Governor commanded Social Distancing.
I hear on the loudspeaker…not a smiling, cheering voice in these times of uncertainty….but a loud, demanding voice…
“Remember shoppers, you MUST be six feet away from the person next to you. We must have people six feet so that we are practicing social distancing.”
The voice felt loud and angry.
I wondered for a moment if I was in an episode of Twilight Zone or some other sci-fi show where isles were cleaned out, bulk bins literally disappered, and whole sections of the grocery store were gone…
And while I get the need for safety and to obey authority….
Have we gotten off kilter? When did we shrink in fear, to where people’s eyes dim, dart away, bodies fidget in fear as if everything in their surroundings might cause them to catch the virus?
Statistics say, Washington is making the curve away from this illness. Yet, fear is increasing.
In today’s world, people seem to be perverbially dying, not from the virus, but from the “what if’s” plaguing their thinking.
If I remember right, Paul got poisoned by a snake when shipwrecked on an island….but he didn’t die. John was boiled alive, but he kept on preaching the gospel.
And no, I am not saying, just because we love Jesus we are immune to every virus, have some gold ticket that promises us to never get the illness.
I am saying, if we are children of God, if we actually hold a title as Sons and Daughter’s of the Utmost Highest….
Why do we fear? Why would we shrink back in doubt, as if God’s love won’t be with us…in sick or in health?
And if the Love of God is always inside us, why do we stand shaken by tomorrow?
What I found so ironic about the grocery clerk screaming at me to get back and to not load my groceries from the side of the conveyer belt, was that midway between my order, this lady got off her shift.
And what did she do? This same lady that yelled at me for getting too close to her, brushed right past me, inches from me, swiping my body, as she left her shift and let another clerk take her place.
So, I wonder, is some of our panic, rules and regulations, a result from us not having control? Don’t out of control people, just try to control people?
What’s more “ironic” is, as I took my cart full of bagged groceries and began to leave….I saw the liquor section of the store.
There, no red tape to stand behind, no six feet social distancing. People were smashed close by, chatting with one another. There was no big, plastic barrier between the cashier and the person buying alcohol. People were in a huddle, face-to-face with one another.
Could this idea that when social distancing is convenient, we follow every order, but when it conflicts with our own desires, we exclude what seems unnecessary?
Just like the hike we drove to the other day….Sixty people flooded one small trail. Supposedly, that was
social distancing? Yet, churches remain empty?
Medical supplies are running out. Women and children are sewing masks fervently. Doctors and nurses and retired medical staff have been called in by our Governor from retirement because of this crisis.
All the while, our Governor is using valuable supplies and well educated doctors to keep performing abortions, claiming medical “exemption”, for taking unborn lives.
While our state boasts that it is taking radical measures to help “save people”, the innocent are dying daily, unnecessarily.
Satanists were even allowed to perform at the state’s capital, days before this virus started in Washington.
A Comprehensive Sex Bill, our Governor just signed into order, giving the school districts power to “educate” our children.
Still, I wonder if God is allowing this time our kids are out of school, for parents to wake up and realize what’s happening in our nation?
Yes, we have an epidemic. That epidemic is sin.
It’s hate, fear and lies and it’s blinding us from within. Love has been replaced with fear. And fear is robbing us from giving dignity and respect…
It’s killing the innocent, while we publically cry….”Save us from this Coronavirus”.
“If I shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or if I command locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence and plague among My people, and My people, who are called by My Name, humble themselves, and pray and seek (crave, require as a necessity) My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear [them] from heaven, and forgive their sin and heal their land.”
2 Chron. 7:13-14
