Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until His wrath has passed by.
Isaiah 26:20
Well, it’s been three weeks of social distancing but it already feels like ∞ days and the extrovert inside of me is screaming for release. During this time I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions I never thought I would ever ask. “How can I be an effective pastor when I’m unable to meet up with people? How can we create and experience community when we cannot physically gather together? Is there somewhere in my home I can hide where my kids can never find me?” Likewise, I’m sure all of you have been confronted with questions of your own. This season of quarantine sort of reminds me of the Passover in the story of Exodus, when the Angel of Death swept across the land of Egypt passing over the Israelites’ homes. But after the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt, their lives did not get any easier. They still left their homes, they crossed the Red Sea, and they wandered in the desert for forty years. After our quarantine is lifted, I imagine our lives won’t go back “normal” like before. There will be a big adjustment that everyone will need to make. But one thing was true for the Israelites in Exodus as it is for God’s people today… God will be with us. God may not lead us with a traveling cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night like He did with the Israelites, but I’m certain God will be with us as He has always been. As a result, God’s people will be better off because God’s presence was with them.
