Globally, people have been pressed into forced isolation. They can’t go to work. Most of their favorite stores and restaurants are closed. The kids are home 24/7, and the familiar forward motion of life has come to a standstill. The cessation of our normal activities has forced us to stop and entertain the possibility of rest. This can go two ways – positive or negative. The negative aspect is that we do nothing with our emotions and let them drag us around to deliver us back into our routine of life when things get back to “normal” without having made any substantive adjustments in our thinking. There is a positive aspect of learning how to rest.

The following quote is from my book, BEYOND. A few months ago, while writing the final draft of the book, I had no idea how real and personal the following paragraph would become for me and many others. It gave me a positive handhold for this challenging time.

“In a place of rest, I will recognize what can impede the long-term endurance needed to finish well. A primary root of the Hebrew word for sabbath means “to exterminate.” When we stop to rest, things begin to surface in our life that has been hidden beneath a great deal of shallow surface activity. The flotsam of wrong motives and unhealthy ways of thinking start to rise to the surface, and we see their stark and deadly reality. We must exterminate these things before they push us so hard that we collapse emotionally and spiritually from self-induced exhaustion.” 

Today, examine the flotsam that is floating around your life in this time of isolation. Deal with it. Assign it a new place in your thinking if it is positive or exterminate it if it is negative. You are being prepared for reentry. What you are going through is part of that preparation.