Quarantine Pt. 2

Here we are, quarantine post part 2. 

It's been 54 days since Part 1 and honestly, not that much has changed. 

We have been sheltering in place other than grocery shopping, working from home, going on walks, and I've been watching Big Brother starting all the way back to season 1 and boy, has it changed. Season 1 is 77 episodes, just in case you were wondering. Like, what?! 77 episodes. 

Needless to say, I have plenty to watch. 

A few things I want to remember from the last 54 days:

 Getting video footage and pictures of this little thing holding a LIZARD!

That is one thing I will not be sharing in with her seeing as how when I see a lizard I run the opposite way. 

Jason's delicious lemon pound cake that was shared with the family for Easter.

 The first time I've ever spent Easter apart from both my family & my church family. 

Something that was circulating the internet was the saying: "Churches are empty this Easter but, so was the tomb" which I thought was such a neat connection. 

This has served as such a tangible experience bringing about the truth that what happens in the world doesn't change what we know to be true about God and what He has done for us. 

 These two cuties in their Easter-themed attire.

And these two cuties taking an Easter selfie while wishing we could all be celebrating together. 

Oh, and more lemon desserts. 

Whoops! 

Papa Steve's belated birthday gift turned out better than I could have imagined! 

Contact Rafael for your own caricature here. He was so incredibly nice and easy to work with.

Our first family get together since quarantine started and it was to celebrated Dad's belated birthday combined with an early Mother's Day celebration. 

It was SO nice to get together with family and feel...normal. 

 We've gone on many, many walks and have seen some of the most beautiful skies. 

 And, I started keeping this little cutie. We've been hanging out for going on 5 weeks now and he's such a little cutie and growing so much. I feel like he changes every time I come over! 

The main thing I wanted to circle back to was how I ended my last quarantine post. 

I asked the question or more so, made the statement:

"Think about what God is trying to teach me and show me during this time, make the best of it."

and what has continually come to the forefront of my mind has been this word: rest. 

It's come up in my daily Bible reading, in my leisure reading ("Even Better Than Eden" by Nancy Guthrie), and in many conversations I've had with people about being quarantined and how we have basically been forced to slow day and take life one day at a time--moment by moment. It's something that has more so, become the norm and it has actually been neat seeing how it's being woven into our lives through a very unexpected, sometimes scary, and very unknown circumstance. 

I wanted to end by sharing a few excerpts from "Even Better Than Eden" from the chapter, "The Story of the Sabbath" because I felt like these words were ringing so, so incredibly true during this quarantine time and it helped me to refocus my thoughts and see this all in a different light. 

"The weekly Sabbath was intended to jog Israel's collective memory concerning God's sufficiency and supply in the past and his promise concerning the future. They were to remember his work of creation as well as his work of redemption."

"Sabbath keeping would set God's people apart as being so well taken care of by their God that they could take a day to rest. It would set them apart as a people who had something to look forward to: unending, all-encompassing rest in the presence of the one true God."

"In this way, they would be reminded of the better land God was preparing and the provision God was making for their rest. In this way, they would be regularly reminded that God would be faithful to preserve their inheritance, not merely in the Promised Land of Canaan, but in the ultimate promised land of the new heaven and the new earth, where they would experience ultimate and unending rest."

"Jesus made clear that the rest of God is not apprehended through our work but, through His. Our work now is to put our faith and trust in His work."

"Of course the greatest work Christ accomplished happened as he hung on a Roman cross. It didn't look very fruitful; it didn't look like he was subduing the earth; it didn't look like he was exercising dominion. It looked like his efforts were pointlesss, like he was being subdued, like the offspring of the Serpant had won. The One who had promised rest experienced on the cross, the greatest restlessness even known to man, the restlessness that you and I deserve to endure forever. There on the cross He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It was the sixth day of the week when Christ cried to from the cross, "it is finished". The work was done. On the cross, Jesus accomplished his most fruitful work, the salvation of all who believe; he subdued the earth so that it shook in response. By cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, nailing it to the cross, Jesus exercised dominion. Jesus was put into the tomb, and then there was a day of rest, a Sabbath. "Having worked himself to death, Jesus rested from his labors". Then came the first day of the week, the first day of the new creation, the day Jesus rose from the dead."

"We gather on The Lord's Day to remember creation and redemption as well as to anticipate the new creation. We are reminded that we are not yet at home with the Father; we're not yet walking with Him in the new garden where we will see him face-to-face. We experience a measure of rest as we are joined to Christ in His death and resurrection  but we know there is a better, fuller, final rest in our future. The reality of a greater rest to which this day is just a pointer, a reminder, an opportunity for reorientation."

I am choosing to rest in the certainty that God is faithful and that He has a purpose in this "quarantine life" that we're all navigating and I am choosing to stand firm on the foundation of knowing and believing that He loves me and He cares for me (and for you) and that we are promised rest from this weary world.