What can’t be locked down!

Of all the events capable of becoming a shared global memory, a pandemic lockdown wasn’t the one most of us would have envisaged or desired. Yet most of humanity now knows what an enforced “sheltering in place” feels like. While the lockdown experience can result in great innovation and community spirit, it can also lead to stressful feelings of isolation and futility or, conversely, the tension of too many people at home, bringing unsought added responsibilities. 

Whatever the difficulties we face, within or outside of a lockdown period, God—who is infinite, inexhaustible, divine Love—is capable of delivering us from them, as the Psalmist experienced. He sang of divinity, “I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place” (Psalms 118:5). 

During a lockdown, we might feel the “large place” we want to be set in is any space outside our familiar four walls, or if we don’t have a place of our own, any space with four walls that we can call home. In either case, the “large place” God sets us in isn’t a location; it’s a mental state that the Bible describes as “the kingdom of God.” This divine realm is the spiritual consciousness of divine Love’s infinite ever-presence and supreme government, which are always at hand for all to discover and begin to experience. This is true irrespective of whether we can get out and about or find traditional shelter. As Jesus put it, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20, 21).