FINDING GOD IN QUARANTINE
By Jake Thurston
How do you grow in God when it feels like everything has been stripped away from you?
Job asked the same question. Job is a man from the Old Testament who had a great life. He was rich, had a ton of livestock, servants, and a beautiful family. But most of all, he was an incredibly righteous man. He was a humble servant to the Lord Almighty, never wavering in his faithfulness, always sure to offer the required sacrifices for both his own sins and his family’s sins, just to make sure they were covered.
Job had it all. Until he lost it all.
Within 24 hours, he lost his livestock, his servants, his properties, and his children (Job 1:13-21). He had everything going for him under the sun, until in a moments notice, like a flash of lightning, it was all gone. (Not to mention the painful sores and skin infections he developed shortly after, just to make matters worse [1:7-8]).
He was stripped of everything.
You may find yourself feeling a lot like Job these days. Maybe you didn’t lose your livestock and servants to a hoard of barbarians, but you did lose the rest of your senior year. You lost commencement. You lost graduation parties. You lost senior trips, prom, traveling, weddings, and making memories, in exchange for being stuck at home, 24/7, trying to figure out online learning and looking at screens way too much.
Being forced into quarantine feels like you’re being stripped of everything valuable to you.
Not only does such a radical shift in lifestyle wear your down physically, emotionally, mentally, and socially, but it especially impacts your spirituality. How do you find God while in quarantine? While you’re isolated? When everything is going wrong and doubts are piling up in your mind faster than the daily total of coronavirus cases? You may even find that you’re bitter, upset, frustrated, and perplexed towards why God would allow this in the first place.
Well, Job found himself feeling a lot like you. Throughout this book of Scripture, Job cries out to his friends about how depressed he is and why God seems to be against him. In one place, Job says, “If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—no wonder my words have been impetuous. The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me” (Job 6).
Isn’t that encouraging? Maybe outright it doesn’t seem so, but we can learn some key insights from Job’s life for how we can grow in God when it seems like we’ve been stripped of everything.
- It’s Okay to Be Upset. If there’s anyone who knows brokenness, it’s God. He feels our pain more than we do. Just think about that. Don’t feel like you can’t be upset… But also don’t feel like you can’t bring God into your disappointment. He’s right here with you, and he gives you permission to ask the hard questions and feel the hard emotions. Invite him into this with you.
Since you probably have a lot more time on your hands, try practicing the spiritual disciplines of silence and It’s like praying, but without saying any words. Find a quiet place all by yourself, eliminate distractions, and simply sit there with God. Allow yourself to feel what you need to feel… to sit in the pain… and simply let that be your prayer. God loves it when we let him in. - Press Into Faith – Even When It’s Hard. Job questions God a lot throughout this difficult time. But Job 1:22 says, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” Never once does he blame God for causing this. He wonders why God allowed it, and what he could have possibly done to deserve it. But he never waves in knowing who God is.
Translation: Going through difficult times doesn’t have to change how you see God. It might change how you feel, what you pray for, how you read Scripture, and how you worship through online formats. But it doesn’t change who God is. - God’s Got This. Job makes a lot of petitions for God to show up and prove himself. And boy does God show up big time. At the end of this story, Job is brought before God, who asserts Job that God is powerful, mighty, sovereign, and knows more about what goes on in this world he created than we do (Job 38-41). In the end, Job’s life goes back to normal, only it’s twice as good as what it was before.
The uncertainty we’re in right now seems like it will never end. But this too will pass. The Lord is still on the throne. He knows more about what’s going on than the world’s leading doctors, scientists, and politicians. The question we need to ask ourselves, then, is: Are we listening to what he’s telling us? Just as we’re crying out to him in prayer, God is also crying out to us with a response to encourage us, challenge us, and grow us.
Are we taking the time to sit still, in the quiet, in our pain, to hear what we need to hear?
