Don't Waste This Quarantine Sabbath
In Michigan we have been living under a lockdown order for about a week now. Before that we were being encouraged to minimize close contact with people in a precautionary way to help minimize the spread of this novel Corona virus.
For about the last two weeks most social activities, including school, sports, church meetings, and clubs have been cancelled. We have been, in a very unusual way, hunkered down waiting for this viral storm to pass.
My family homeschools, so the impact has not been as significant as for families that counted on others to educate and tend to their children for the day. However, they have had co-op meetings cancelled and an inability to do the normal range of external activities that break up the week.
The whole family has suffered from the loss of our usual Sunday routine of gathering with our local church to sing, pray, hug, and laugh. I have still been teaching Sunday school via Zoom and we have been offered music and sermons via video, but there is no question that this is a poor replacement for the real thing.
I have also been forced to work out of my basement office. This period of forced isolation coincides with a major project, so I’ve been working long hours in my windowless (but book-filled) cell staring at several large screen that I (with permission) borrowed from work when they forced us to leave. Coordinating big projects remotely can be effective, but it is more time consuming. In the end, I’m thankful that I have a job that will continue even during an economic downturn.
There will likely be lessons we learn about pandemic response, social responsibility, and emergency preparedness from this, but those are lessons that will frame structures and organizations in the future.
Learning from this Sabbath
Each individual and family should be asking some particular questions about their normal pace of life during this strangely enforced sabbath. What external activities have been taken away that don’t really matter that much? What family activities have been introduced that may be worth holding onto?
It may be that this current shutdown is the first time in a while that parents and children have been forced to spend much time in each other’s company. Don’t let it go to waste.
In the United States families with kids are often harried as they run from school to sports to clubs to homework to bed to start everything over again. Anecdotally, I am aware that many nuclear families rarely sit down to supper together. They, therefore, rarely have the chance to catechize their children, because that responsibility has been farmed out to teachers, coaches, and youth pastors.
We should be using this radical change in activity level, enforced from outside (so parents aren’t the bad guys), to ask some hard questions about what matters and why we do what we do. Here are some suggestions to consider.
Questions to Ponder
First, are you using this time effectively to disciple your children or spouse? Are you all of a sudden at a loss for how to engage your children or spouse about the things that (should) matter most? If so, you are not alone, and you have been given an opportunity by God’s grace to figure out how to get better at engaging your family spiritually. This is a prime responsibility for those of us with families. A couple of meetings each week where someone else provides content is not enough. It’s worth getting this right. If you find success in increased discipleship during this time, would it be worth reordering your life to have more time for it after the quarantine has been lifted?
Second, what activities have been taken away that you really don’t miss much? Think hard about this one. Is the second ongoing sport for your son really necessary? Does it have to be travel league that pulls your family out of regular church attendance? Even if those activities are missed, are they more valuable than the family discipleship they displace?
Third, what activities have been taken away that are missed too much? A surprise cloistering like this can be emotionally difficult. I am sad for the high school and college seniors who are losing their graduation ceremony and that magic period of life where they stand on the cusp of a big-life change. I am sad for the people who were about to open their plays, had just opened a business, or had big travel plans. It is good and right to grieve some of these losses. But is our sense of loss proportionate with the eternal value of the thing lost? Emergencies like this can help reveal the idols in our lives. Take the time to consider what is being grieved and why.
Fourth, in what ways have you been ungrateful for the benefits society has to offer? Most of us take our jobs for granted until they are lost or threatened. Living in a Western capitalistic country, we take for granted that there will always be toilet paper on the shelves, until people start hoarding. We normally have opportunities to gather and worship together freely, but we seldom are sufficiently thankful for it. Use this time to ponder God’s enormous grace in putting us in a society that provides so many of our needs and wants without difficulty.
Conclusion
You may have other questions that are closer to your circumstance right now. We shouldn’t waste a crisis. Not so that we can impose our political and economic views on others with emergency powers, but so that we can ask fundamental questions about our way of life and whether it conforms to a godly vision of the world. This is a sabbath, even for those of us forced to work from home. Don’t miss the opportunity of the sabbath.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.