Strange days indeed

Some not-so-random

thoughts and observations

on the first day of my “isolation”

• Sick Sick Sick by the Queens of the Stone Age didn’t seem like a good way to start my day
• Giving a check to my work partner and noticing how old he’s gotten in the nearly seventeen or so years we’ve been working together and hoping i saw him again when this is all over
• Shutting down a job site with no idea when anyone will be back feels weird
• Being yanked around by the customer through phones and intermediaries and hoping it’s not because he won’t come out of his house and talk to me directly.
• Leaving there and driving all over the county closing offices for my wife’s company
• Empty parking lots and darkened stores.
• Cherry blossoms and dogwoods in full bloom reminding me of God’s promise of resurrection after death in Spring
• A line of cars snaking around a large parking lot hoping to get into the bank drive-thru.
• Joggers, walkers, bicyclists, bikers, kids with loud cars, old men with convertibles enjoying the weather.
• A line of people wrapping around the corner hoping to get into the gun and ammo shop.
• Full parking lots in grocery stores, liquor stores, and beer stops.
• Remembering i’m carrying around all of my empty gas cans to fill them.
• People wearing gloves at the grocery store.
• Me wearing gloves in all of the offices i’m entering.
• Forgoing dinner with my folks because i’ve been every where and met lots of people and just want to make sure i’m not symptomatic before i go there.
• But the best was the first thing this morning— my reading plan called for Psalm 91 today. 

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High

will lodge in the shadow of Shaddai.”

The secret place of the Most High.  That phrase always strikes me.  The shadow of Shaddai.  Almighty, all powerful.  i don’t know all it means but to me it reminds me that Jesus isn’t great because he saves us from affliction but through it.  The flames are taken by him and we hide in his shadow.  But it seemed all the more poignant because like the Queens of the Stone Age, Psalm 91 repeats sick, sick, sick three times. 
“For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler,

from the plague of destruction.”

“You need not fear the terror of the night,

or the arrow that flies by day,

or the plague that spreads in the darkness,

or the destruction that devastates at noon.”

“No harm will befall you,

and no plague will come near your tent.”