I am under house arrest. Following my short trip to Newcastle in the North East of England I am now enduring at least 7 days of self-isolation, plus however long it takes for my Covid-19 test result to come back. Thankfully, if the result is negative, I will be released next week, but in a few days the NE of England will be reclassified as high risk due to an upsurge in cases, and I would be required to isolate for the full 14 days if I had traveled then.
I can pace around the garden but must not leave the premises. Yesterday the door bell rang. I opened the upstairs window and called out 'hello?' only to find a burly police officer standing outside. 'Just a welfare check' he claimed. 'Tell it to the marines' I thought, remembering the half a dozen folk who have been fined up to £10,000 for being caught outside their homes in the last few weeks.
In many ways, of course, those of us who have known chronic illness over the years, have been here before. 'Welcome to my world!' you might say. Long-term illness and pain isolates you. It cuts you off from human comfort and touch. Robs you of the joys of fellowship and the ability to go out and enjoy the outside world. And it's hard.
This isolation, without the right to an hour's exercise and no ability to go and buy goods at all, reawakens my sympathy for those who have been shielding during this pandemic. But it also clarifies for me the immense frustration that the Apostle Paul must have felt during his two year house arrest in Rome. Not only could he not go out for exercise, or attend church at all, he may well have been chained to a Roman soldier for much of the time as well!
Yet it is possible, even likely, that he wrote his famous letter to the Philippians during this period. It is an epistle marked by joy. The word recurs again and again. He prays with joy (1:4), rejoices that his chains have given him opportunities to share his faith (1:18), and chooses rejoicing in God instead of grumbling and complaining (2:17-18). He expresses joy at the gifts people were placing outside his door (4:10-14), and he not only expresses his own joy in God, but he urges folk who know Christ to 'rejoice always and again I say, rejoice!' (4:4).
So, I am going to try and treat this period of compulsory self-isolation in a more positive way. If you are shielding, or know someone who is, thank God for modern technology that keeps us in contact with others, and use it to be encouraged and to cheer others on. But, if you, like me, are tasting the long weary challenging days of house arrest, then I can do no better than recommend the letter Paul wrote from his Roman first century AirBnB.
After all, 'I can do all this through him who gives me strength' (Phil. 4:13).
