July 2020 — pg. 15
With God in
Quarantine
By Roberta Mosier-Peterson
Six weeks into the “shelter in place” order in
New York state, my husband prays, “Lord help
Roberta to focus and not sit at her desk organizing
her colored pencils all day.” Even though I
laughed, the question “how does he know that I do
that?” ran into my mind.
Having our two home offices about 7 feet
down the hall from one another had its down
side. I appreciated his prayer because I had been
suffering from pandemic brain. I found focusing
and concentrating very challenging, and I was
slow to admit the impact that it was having on me.
According to a mental health professional that
I spoke with online, this was normal. Situations
such as pandemics cause a low-grade stress
even if you are not personally impacted by the
virus. There are many good ways of coping when
the world feels out of control. Organizing my
collection of colored pencils restored order and
beauty to my world that felt out of control. This
quarantine life made little sense to me.
Interruptions such as these invite us to face how
we have been living. Have we been mindlessly
living our days by the force of habit? If so, living
in quarantine will likely give us a chance to
examine our habits. Healthy or not-so-healthy
ways of coping kick into overdrive when crises like
pandemics hit. Even these ways of coping have
their roots in our thought life. The human mind
is the most powerful force in creation. It is in the
mind that all behavior has its beginning.
Jesus illustrates this by pointing to a tree saying,
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad
tree bear good fruit” (Luke 6:43). The really great
news is that God is in the business of making us
thoroughly good. To draw out Jesus’ example even
further, if the roots and trunk of my thought life
were healthy and producing good fruit before
“Have we been
mindlessly living
our days by the
force of habit?”
the crisis, it is likely that there is good fruit being
produced now. Not only is God eager to answer
my prayers for focus in times of stress, He is able to
remake my mind over time. If I am willing to listen
and yield to the process, it will result in having the
mind of Christ.
Setting Our Minds
Paul makes the audacious claim that having the
mind of Christ is possible (1 Corinthians 2 and
Colossians 3:1–3). In Philippians, Paul instructs us to
“be of the same mind” as Christ (Philippians 2:1–3
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