CLOSED

Our local Senior Center was one of our community's first closures in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The lockout affected a popular thrift store and services for the aging community, including a daily meal, recreation, legal help and other support. One ill person mingling with others could exponentially infect hundreds of vulnerable seniors. And so the parking lot has sat empty for months. When that will change is anybody’s guess as our county continues to report Covid-19 cases.

As I go out into the invisible world of contagion with my mask and gloves, I sense the stifling of spirits. I also observe the attempts to be gentler, kinder and appreciative. But sanitizing and masking won’t solve the whole problem of weary spirits. Or more recently, the angry spirits that have turned cities into war zones of death, looting and destruction.

We’re repeating the behavior that the Old Testament prophet Isaiah described as “ever hearing but never understanding....ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused” (Matthew 13:14-15a).What? Isaiah quoted in the New Testament? Yes, this good prophet who saw the “disease” of godlessness among his people was used of God to speak timeless words that Jesus would quote for His times--and that He can rightly speak of ours.

I’ve been trying to listen more carefully to Jesus’ words and those of His disciples in a New Testament read-through during this stay-at-home time.  Each time I do a read-through, a big idea seems to surface. This time, I noticed mobs a lot more. The Lord and His followers faced them regularly.  Mobs put Jesus on the cross.  Stephen was stoned to death.  A Jewish zealot named Saul watched that death-scene with satisfaction. Then Saul’s life changed in a supernatural moment in an encounter with the risen Christ. Transformed, Saul-renamed-Paul would face his own near-death encounters at the hands of mobs. But he and the other early Christian leaders never gave up telling people about God’s better plan for the people who inhabit this planet.

Paul put it in a nutshell in his last words to his protégé Timothy.  He reminded this young pastor to not be surprised when hard times came: “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). But he went back to the hope: scriptures.  “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15-16).

The Bible will never hang out a sign that says, “Closed for virus concerns.” Just the opposite: it’s there for hope in the midst of virus concerns.  It’s the equipper for life as God intended life to happen.  For those who truthfully and authentically call themselves followers of Jesus Christ, it’s the hope of something bigger and greater after we exhale our last breath—which, with Covid-19, could happen within days of the virus invading a body: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge will award to me on that day” (2 Timothy 7-8).