9. Are you safe?

9. How safe are you?

Psalms 104:9: "You set a boundary that they may not pass over, so that they will not return to cover the earth."

     Are you one of those people who struggle to say no, or to disagree with somebody when their opinions are not that valid? Do you often find yourself saying yes to something, when deep down, your emotions and thoughts are screaming NO!? If so, you are probably struggling with setting and maintaining boundaries in your life.

     God is into boundaries as the verse said. We read in Psalms that He has set a boundary to protect the world from the sea. God has given us moral boundaries to obey, like the Ten Commandments. He has given us health boundaries like we find in the book of Leviticus. He even mentioned physical boundaries in the sense that He has set boundaries in place in nature. He set boundaries for the ocean. He set boundaries in the sky, in the heavens. Imagine for a moment that there were no physical boundaries in nature. Imagine if the sea was just left to do whatever it wanted, what would this earth look like? It would probably be covered with water like the verse says. What if the stars and the planets did not have set orbits or paths to travel in, in other words, no boundaries? Our earth would probably have been knocked off its axis by now.

     God is a God of boundaries. The theme of keeping His laws, regulations and commandments permeates the themes of the whole Bible. These regulations and commandments are not there to restrict us or to spoil our fun. They are there to keep us safe and to protect us. God wants us to be safe.

     With COVID-19, we have also been faced with other kinds of boundaries. COVID-19 has brought boundaries into our lives which we did not have before. Some of these boundaries are good, some of them not so good. Some of the good ones for example are that you should wash your hands; if you have any symptoms of COVID-19, you should isolate; keep public gatherings to a minimum and then only have a few people there. When we go to the shops, we should keep a safe distance from other people and we should wear masks. If you have any symptoms or if you are coughing or sneezing, cough into a tissue or into your arm. Discard the tissue afterwards. When you use a handwash, use one with 70% alcohol because it will kill all the germs. Yes, these are all good boundaries, boundaries that are there to keep us safe. 

     On the other hand, the government has brought in some rules that are, in my opinion, not so logical and are not really there to keep us safe. For example, I heard it was said that you are not allowed to mow your front lawn. If you have a small piece of lawn just outside your gate where people usually sit, you are not allowed to mow it. You will actually get a fine if you do that. When you go to the shop, you can have two people in the car, but one must sit in the front seat and the other one must sit in the back seat, which makes no sense. I mean, me and my husband are sleeping together in the same bed and now we are not allowed to sit on two chairs next to each other. We are allowed to stand next to each other at the shop, but we are not allowed to sit next to each other in the car. These are silly rules that do not really seem to be keeping us safe, but somebody decided to make these rules.

     What do we do when there are these types of silly rules imposed on us because of COVID-19, or generally in our own lives or in our families, or even at work? What do we do with these rules that make no sense and are not really there to keep us safe?

     The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 2:13-14, what we should do: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one of authority, or to governments as sent by Him, for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right, you may silence the ignorance of foolish men." Even though some rules may be silly rules, God is calling upon us to obey them.

     However, Peter continues to say in the book of Acts 5:29: "We ought to obey God rather than man". It may sound like a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand Peter tells us to submit ourselves to human institutions and their rules and to authorities for God's sake, but on the other hand he says we should obey God rather than man. This however is not really a contradiction. What Peter is basically saying, is as long as the laws of man do not go against the law of God, we should obey them. We should submit to them. Do not be rebellious and refuse doing these things because they do not make sense to you. If your life is not in danger and if they are not infringing on your moral boundaries or they are not against God's boundaries, then you should obey these rules. In other words, Peter is saying that God's rules come first and secondly, even if the civil laws infringe on our personal boundaries, we should obey them.