When Quarantine Makes You Busier

Picture by Anna Earl, Unsplash.

There are folks who can't stand being motionless for a minute. They need to be up and about every sec of their day. Is this good? It depends. If you do it with joy and peace, you win. If you do it stressfully, you lose. Bad news is, many of us don't realize the distress we have with the things we do until we get very sick because of them.

Quarantine is a good time to do what you've always loved to do but hadn't the apt time for it. Like relax and take it easy. I watch some people (my window looks out directly to the street so I watch a lot of folks defy the total lockdown) keep moving about without any definite thing in mind to do. They walk to the street corner, look around, and then go back home. And that without a mask on. And then do it again after a few minutes.

It's understandable if they go out to buy food. They don't. Well, some go out to buy cigarettes.

Some try their hands at indoor gardening, which is supposed to relax you. But it's different with them. They get tense. You see it in their faces and movements--some kind of desperation and apprehension, probably whether the plants would grow and bear fruit or not. They're almost too nervous caring for their garden. I asked one guy once, "Can't you just enjoy what you're doing and don't mind about results?" He looked at me like I was an idiot.

Or was I?

"It'd be humiliating to do all this and not have one plant bearing any fruit later!" he explained. "Humiliating to whom?" I queried. He turned to me and said, "To people!" I looked around us and asked, "What people? I don't see anyone around." He came closer and whispered: "I posted it on Facebook. Now my friends are going to expect something impressive of it!"

Results. The mad insistence on producing certain results is a mental disease most folks are afflicted with. It's what makes you unreasonably busier even during quarantine. It's what takes away peace. People don't know how to do things freely anymore without letting results judge and condemn them.

Remember the Parable of the Talents? It doesn't matter what results you have as long as you obey the instructions. One had double result, another had just a small fraction of it, and they were all good. The idea was to make something out of the talent entrusted to you, not really how much you make of it.

People (especially church people) have lost the joy in being good stewards of their lives. Even the joy in doing church ministries. Joy is different from mere satisfaction. You may be satisfied with your accomplishments and mistake it for joy. But it's really just satisfaction--you fulfilled a desire or goal--but it may have been accompanied by tons of stress. You won't know it until it starts wrecking your health and it's too late.

Joy requires no prerequisites, presuppositions  or certain results. You do something and you're happy. Period. You're so in love and sing for God and that's it. You don't need good accompaniment or a good voice. You don't have your voices blending well in a trio or quartet so you practice extra hard. The moment you aim hard for some desired quality or standard (especially man-made), you lose it. God's standard is  heart obedience. Just do it--and enjoy it.

This is why so many end up very sick and needing maintenance meds or worse, many are put in the ICU needing sophisticated and costly medical treatment.

Why?

Simply because they've lost the joy and peace. Watch kids play or do their work--especially work they do in their favorite subject. If we don't stress them with our expectations, they'd just enjoy everything. No wonder it's impossible to enter heaven's kingdom if we don't receive it as a little child. Remember, we're expected to merely obey. Results come from God.