I’ve been a semi-self-imposed quarantine for the past 48 hours. I say “semi” because my wife is enforcing it, too. It’s a virus; you don’t want to know any more than that. I wasn’t worth much at all yesterday, even to read a page or two from a magazine. Today has been better—I read a Christian sci-fi manuscript someone sent to me recently—but still the whole of my travels has been about ten feet, no further than from my room to the top of the stairs. That was when I called downstairs to my family at dinnertime tonight, “I miss you!” They’ve been as close as the doorway to my room, once in a while, but that’s a lot less connection than usual. I expect tomorrow I’ll be allowed the run of the house again, if not beyond.
Just now I ran through some pictures on my computer. We went to Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison in 2007, where spectacular views abound.
On another end of some aesthetic spectrum or other, these were shot out the back window of my parents’ on Christmas Day, 2006 (bet you weren’t expecting Christmas photos now, were you?).
I think those are sunflower seeds in the little snowman’s bowl. In the same set of photos was my late mother, smiling from the home where she and Dad lived for 30 years. Dad moved out after she passed away. I didn’t include any actual family photos here because I didn’t get everyone’s permission. Even the birdseed and the squirrel bring back family memories, though. My parents loved feeding the birds in their yard, and though they usually tried not to feed the squirrels—always a challenge with any bird feeder—they made an exception on Christmas.
Much as I like my Gunnison pictures, they don’t bring me a smile like the family photos do.
These connections are important. We need each other. Some Christians falsely think that’s because of some flaw since the fall. But it was in Genesis 2:18 that the Lord said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The fall didn’t happen until the next chapter. Up until then, God had pronounced everything good. Some think that God created Adam without Eve, and set him the task of observing the animals before she came along, so that he could appreciate the need for someone “fit for him.”
I’m sure my skeptical friends on this blog will react to my making such literal reference to the early chapters of Genesis. Those disputes are for another time. Suffice it to say for now that it’s clear we need each other. We were created for love. We were created for holiness and truth and many other things besides, too; but only in love can those be true, and only where truth and holiness abound can love be at its best.
My family here has been taking good care of me in spite of the quarantine. But it will be good to get out again.
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