Occasionally, a verse grabs hold of your soul and refuses to let go. For me, that verse is Jude 23: “Rescue others by snatching them from the fire.”

Not encourage them from a distance.

Not observe them from a safe place.

Not post about them online.

Rescue them.

Snatch them.

Pull them back from destruction.

It’s active. It’s urgent. It’s messy. It’s costly.

Honestly, I think we’ve forgotten just how radical that calling really is.

There’s something dangerous that can happen to people who spend their lives helping others.

Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
Not with some giant explosion.

It happens slowly.

Quietly.

You keep showing up for broken people. You keep carrying heavy conversations. You keep walking into hospital rooms, counseling sessions, funeral homes, addiction stories, marriage crises, anxiety battles, and spiritual darkness. You keep trying to rescue people from the flames like Jude 23 talks about.

This shutdown is only beginning, and already most of us are looking forward to life getting back to normal. But my prayer is that the church will never get back to normal. Here’s what I mean.

Too much of the church I’ve seen in my 41 years has been complacent, apathetic, lukewarm, and self-seeking. I don’t want to get back to that.

In some ways, the church is being scattered today, and that’s what should continue:

“We gather to scatter.”

Maybe God is using this moment to scatter the church so it can actually BE the church. Maybe this quarantine can make us more aware of the needs and hopes of those around us.

So I’m praying for a new pandemic, a gospel pandemic, a pandemic as contagious as any virus we’ve ever experienced.