Feeling Isolated?

In a series of email exchanges yesterday, my friend, colleague in ministry, and in many ways a model for life - Roy Lawson - made a comment that I think can be helpful to us during this time of "Stay in Shelter" routine we ought to be following.

Roy has been a preacher at great churches, a college professor, a college president, a seminary professor, and mission consultant for many years. He and his wife for the past few years might best be described as "world travelers impacting the kingdom in their travels."  I first learned of him when I was in seminary and he spoke at an on-campus seminar of "reading and writing." At the time he was the pastor of a large church in Indianapolis. His topic that day was something along the lines of "what good preachers ought to be reading."

I can still remember the sense of relief I felt after listening to him speak about his own reading habits. His reading list was broad and included things like novels - modern and historic; biographies; historical fiction; studies in a variety of different academic topics; as well as things related to Scripture, theology, and the church. I didn't get any sense of some sort of artificial separation between "sacred" and "secular."

My sense of relief was rooted in the fact that I was beginning to read like Roy Lawson! Over the years we became friends through our common interest in Globalscope Campus Ministries and the kingdom of God in general. He grew up in the northwest. I grew up in the deep south. We both have dairy farms in our biographical details.

We both think alike about a variety of topics - tough ones included - which I think can only be the result of our mutual respect for learning, sacred and secular to use the terms so many love. We often share "have you read . . ." comments.

Despite living on the other side of the country and for much of the past few years traveling all over the world, Roy regularly checks on Vicki. It was in one of those emails to see how Vicki was doing that he said something that once again makes me grateful to call him friend.

Here's what he said: "it's really interesting to read Paul's letters, written while he's imprisoned and isolated and separated from his friends - while we're experiencing a hint of the same thing."

I love that he said "a hint of the same thing," and am not in the least that he said it that carefully. We aren't exactly spending our days in prison - and I hope that all of us are praying for those who literally are in prison and at great risk in over-crowded prisons. In Georgia, the extraordinarily poor health care for prisoners has been a front-page, multi-week issue for the Atlanta Journal Constitution long before the current crisis was even imagined. Our very conservative legislature seems unmoved by it all and we keep locking people up. So if you need something to put on your prayer list - this is a pretty good item to add!

But . . . we are "isolated" in ways that we aren't accustomed to. And that can be difficult. Just this morning a news story in metro-Atlanta was about a step-father who shot and killed his 16 year old stepson overnight. The news reporter included the challenge of staying mentally healthy when life as we have always known it seems to have been turned completely over.

Paul literally was in prison when he wrote what are often called the prison epistles. Those epistles include Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.  Particularly in Philippians 1 you can feel the tension between "when will this be over?" "how will this end?" and "is the ending 'life' or 'death/'"

That sounds a bit relevant. Georgia is currently in a bit of an uproar over those very questions and whether the governor made the right call or not.

I'm a regular Bible reader - daily - and am currently reading through the Torah. But I think I will add to that schedule reading through the Prison Epistles. I'm going to think about Paul's outlook, his attitude, his passion for the church and fellow believers, his "contentment" in whatever happens. I want to remember - he said these words from a prison in Rome (most likely) and managed to stay not only mentally fit, but spiritually fit as well.

If you're not a regular Bible reader, maybe this can be a great outcome from this time of isolation - that you become a regular reader of Scritpure.

If you are a regular reader of Scripture, then join with me in adding a passage from the Prison Epistles to your reading each day.

Once again, my good friend Roy Lawson has found a way to speak into my life in ways that make me stop and thank God for his friendship!