He held a paper in his hands that gave him authorization to be on the roads.
I didn’t understand until my husband explains, “Complete lockdown is likely coming to Washington soon, just like what’s happened in other states.”
My mind spins and tries to peg down this reality. After all, I’m just a girl who played in the streets as a child, and has only experienced the land of the free, the home of the brave.
My better half goes on to explain, “If lockdown occurs, the only places that will be open will be pharmacies, grocery stores, and hospitals/medical clinics.”
I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it.
The last couple days I’ve overdosed on the word, “Coronavirus”. I’ve tried to rid myself from all the “excitement”…purposefully pausing from searching the latest, fear-laden updates.
I’ve shut my doors and waited for this thing to pass. It hasn’t.
Then, last night I was reminded that the veil between us and heaven is thinning. God’s people need not fear. We serve a God who is always near. His angels surround us continually.
And no, that doesn’t mean, we can always just command and demand any sickness away from us.
Mighty missionaries are getting ill, falling. People I love and respect and those who have more faith than two dozen are coming down with Coronavirus, needing immediate treatment…
What “He is with us” does mean is we live and abide and can rest under his wing.
Scripture reminds us, He has always been with his covenanted people, whether in freedom or captivity, isolation or over-taking expansive territories.
Hiking
My family tried to head to a hike this morning. Washington is pretty radical in a lot of ways, but it has the most spectacular forrest and mountains, bays and rivers.
Our white Yukon turned up a gravel road, bumping through potholes for at least twenty minutes.
At the end, what was supposed to be an abandoned trail, one where we could let our canine run free and the kids roam, exploring wildly…
Turned out quite different. At the end of the trail, sat dozens of cars…
Something like sixty people were packed on a small road to walk a thin trail, to so-called “practice social distancing”.
The world is needing some answers, and we are looking to nature to find them. We are all a little lost, and while we can pat on “Spiritual answers”….
Or be dismissive, disregarding this pandemic all together…
More and more people are getting sick. This illness is no respecter of persons.
We ended up not staying at the trails end. We couldn’t find a parking spot and it took us about two 
blocks of backing up, down a thin, dirt road because there was no place to turn around.
But worse than the cars all collecting and a remote trail now flooded with people, was the look on people’s faces as they passed; doom, gloom, despair, and angst.
“What’s wrong with all these people?” I asked my husband probably somewhat naively, as our Yukon hugged the side of a one-lane-road while more cars passed us to hunt for a place for social distancing.
“They are all scared”, my husband tells me. “So many of them have lost their jobs. Nobody knows what to do.”
And yet, as Christians, it can be easy to throw around spiritually sounding answers, “Be courageous”, “The enemy can’t touch us” etc. and it can feel good to magically believe we are immune from difficulty…
But if we were honest, this virus can feel scary. If we were humble in our hearts and aware of our own weakness…
We might admit, life as we’ve known has now forever changed.
Technology, magical medicine, a civilized nation or even some Word of Faith movement is proving to not be mightier than a God who is still sovereign over all things.
I heard on the radio while driving down that dirt road, a talkshow host explain, “If anyone tells you, ‘If you get the virus it’s because you just don’t have enough faith…Don’t beleive them.'”
Overspiritualizing ourselves for the sake of making ourselves feel better, distancing ourselves from pain, projecting our own fears on others, in the name of exhaulting our hopes over other person’s hard circumstances…
Is never compassionate. It’s never kind. And it is never God’s will.
Jesus got lower, not higher. Jesus didn’t incubate himself and then boast how He was more righteous? So why do any of us as believers, think we are entitled to do the same?
My pastor said so wisely the other day…“God is turning churches upside down”.
No more one leader, then a few staff,
being the church, for a large mass of people.
The church is now called to be an upside-down pyramid…
The needs of the mass cry out in their need or ask to help, then that cry reaches a handful of helpers, who are then accountable to a common authority…
That pastor then surrenders himself to the one King…the one and only, true leader of the church.
The lowest in the church are being called to rise up; help, speak up, express need etc. The leaders are being made to become small, lower, servants of them all.
The days of megapastors and sole shoulder-bearers is gone. The people are becoming the church and the church is living and breathing and coming alive, not in a building, but through the hearts of needy people.
It aches me to think Washington State might be on complete lockdown soon…although I know it’s probably best.
But I also know, God has been preparing His people for this moment for years. He gave us the internet
to reach, connect, livestreams and attend conference calls via technology.
We have online sermons, virtual messages, and Bible apps waiting for us in the palms of our hands.
The church is called to rise up, like those today who drove higher, to a mountain-top, winded around a river, seeking a piece of heaven.
We are humans, mere people, reaching and needing the face of God. Like those longing for oxygen, nestling themselves in the trees beside clear waters.
Let’s rise and be the church. Here. Now.
We have a leader, and His name is Jesus. He is with us in the mountains…and He walks with us in every valley…
He is our faithful guide. Where He is there is life; rest, hope, provision and peace…regardless of what we are experiencing…despite what tomorrow might bring.
Victory, power and strength is His. Let’s put our faith in Him.
