Sheltering in Place III

Come, my people, enter your chambers,

And shut your doors behind you;

Hide yourself, as it were, for a little while,

Until the plague is past (Isaiah 26:20).

This was Isaiah’s call to God’s people to shelter in place while God rained judgment on the City of Man. “Hide yourself…until the plague is past,” a call that’s remarkably apropos for our day.

I think of another call: Jesus’ invitation to withdraw from the mad, mad, mad, mad world around us and within us, on any day and for any reason, and enter into that quiet chamber in our hearts that Jesus called our “closet”—to shut the door behind us and bide a wee with him (Matthew 6:6).

David Roper

5.26.20