Isolation
Hello Bride of Christ,
The world often uses isolation in a negative context. When we hear the word isolation we may quickly associate it with a punishment. We isolate criminals from society to make them pay for their crimes in the desire to create a safer society. Protect people. Jails are full to capacity so society is safer, so the world thinks. We isolate those we cannot control with the intent of creating a safer society.
We isolate those with mental illness, who are unable to cope with life. We place them in institutions. Isolate them in physical location for doctors and clinicians to tend to them. We isolate those we cannot understand with the intent of getting to the root of their issue.
We isolate the elderly, the more senior population, placing them in nursing homes away from their family so that a care team can tend to their 24 hour needs. We isolate those we cannot bear with the intent of having all their needs met by a specialist.
We isolate people with contagious diseases we have yet to come to understand. We use isolation to stop the spread. We isolate those with diseases we fear with the intent of ending the disease.
Isolation is the method we resort to when all our human frailties are exposed. If we lack power to control, understand, predict, or simply care for someone or something we resort to isolation. Since we isolate because of our lack we make the error in placing the same motivation for isolation on God. We forget His holiness which makes Him nothing like His creation.
It is time we step back and remember who our creator God is and as the psalmist so adequately penned "that power belongs to God" (Psalm 62:11). When God uses isolation and "makes me to lie down in green pastures" (Psalm 23:1) it is never out of His lack. His holiness gives Him control over all creation for His word declares He is a God of order (1 Corinthians 14:33). His holiness gives Him the ability to know our thoughts and do abundantly above all that we ask or think or imagine according to His power (Ephesians 3:20). His holiness allows Him to bear all our burdens and not grow weary (Matthew 11:28-29, Psalm 55:22). His holiness does not put us outside the camp because our uncleanness scares Him.
Rather God bids us come away with Him because "He has prepared a table before us in the presence of our enemies" (Psalm 23:5) because He desires to anoint our heads with oil, His Holy Spirit's presence." The Holy Spirit, Bride of Christ, is the third part of the trinity which contains all the authority, power, greatness, and fullness of God. This is what God uses isolation for, to fill us up from the top of our heads to the tip of our toes with the fullness of God.
The apostle Paul and even John the disciple experienced this isolation. Paul wrote some of the greatest epistles from prison, a place of isolation. John was taken up to heaven and Jesus Christ was revealed to him at Patmos, an island prison meant to isolate him.
Bride of Christ, may we not limit God who can give more than we even ask, think, or imagine through His power working in us (Ephesians 3:20). May we respond as the psalmist, king David, who recognized his limits compared to the great I AM, "truly my soul silently waits for God." (Psalm 62:1) "My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him." (Psalm 62:5)
