For the past seventy-nine days—or roughly two Floods, as I like to think of it—we have been restricted to the walls of our little community. Together with the rest of Shanghai, we’ve been locked in to prevent the Omicron strain of COVID-19 from overwhelming our city’s healthcare system. Eighty days of every-changing rules, ever-fluctuating restrictions, and the ever-present threat of removal to a mass quarantine facility has had the power to blunt the edge of our gratitude and fill our minds with worries. So, as the brothers and sisters of our church have talked about God’s work over the last few months, we’ve pushed ourselves and one another to embody the message of Hebrews 3 and fight back against the temptation to fear and complain by exhorting one another every day to take what God sends with gratitude and faith. Here are a few thoughts from the midst of a church living under a lockdown.

Early on, we were grateful to God for providing three hot meals a day through our community canteen, especially when other friends’ stocks of food began to run low. But faithlessness rears its head everywhere, and more than one of us, as we were served our hundredth identical greasy rice meal in a row, was tempted to ape the Israelite attitude toward manna and say, “there is nothing at all but this canteen food to look at!” Yet God directed our church early on to study the book of Exodus. Reflecting on this, one sister writes, “Through God’s daily providence of food to the team, He gave me the strength to have peace of mind—even if I need to be taken to the quarantine facility.” God’s faithful provision of what we needed in one area has given us confidence that He will provide in every area. Those provisions may be intertwined with difficulties and even crisis. But throughout them, we know that we will have whatever we need to keep following Him. Another sister in our church writes, “We face an uncertain future every day. But God truly taught me that all I need is Him, and I don’t need anything else.”

That feeling of not knowing—more than anything else—has made life difficult. One sister writes, “in this time of severe uncertainty, when there are no clear answers and no one knows what is going on, I learned again and again that the information I need is God’s Word. I would wake up in the morning and want to read the news—but headlines alone were enough to raise my blood pressure. At night, I would reach for stories of what was happening. In these many days of lockdown, only one news article gave me really useful information. Rather, it was God’s Word, every day, multiple times a day, that showed me the path I should take in each moment, and the promises that could relieve the anxiety exacerbated by the news. Praise God, for His timeless and full truth, which really does answer our most important question and calm our deepest fears.”

As the days have passed, we have seen God’s generosity and mercy in dozens of small providences. A sister writes, “I praise the Lord for helping me to store three extra bottles of my husband’s asthma medicine ahead of the lockdown (something I wouldn’t normally do). During these 70+ days of lockdown, no medical emergency has happened to any of us. We are truly blessed and protected by our Lord.” One of the blessings that has come to mean the most to some, is the gift of sun and sky. A brother writes, “Some of our friends in the city look at four concrete walls every day and can see the outside world through only a tiny window. But God, in His kindness, has allowed us to be restricted in an area that has a garden. He’s made even the required daily COVID tests a blessing, because the weather has been so much more pleasant and comfortable than I can remember it ever being before. I am grateful to the Lord for the privilege to walk outside and stand in line!”

In the news this morning, we were notified that tomorrow the city lockdown is supposed to be broadly lifted. There was much rejoicing, because many of our members have matters to attend to that have become truly urgent as the days ticked by. But on the heels of that announcement, we received word from our neighborhood committee, which makes all the decisions for us, that nothing would change quite yet. We had to wait for things to improve just a bit more, which, they said, would happen “soon.” One of our sisters had written something earlier that seemed perfectly appropriate: “When the Israelites were released from Egypt, it wasn’t smooth, and there were plagues along the way. But no matter what happened, God was always in control!”