There were no snacks or coffee samples at a certain store in Fort Collins.  I was told very dramatically, and with a certain disapproval, “We have shut down all sample stations nationwide.”   There were no smiles, none of the usual happy shoppers.  John and I got our milk, cream, chocolate and agreed, “Let’s get outta here.”  Then the checker didn’t want me touching the sack or my own groceries.  Sigh.

On to The Cupboard, a luxury kitchen store where it was nice, pleasant and quiet (they don’t sell toilet paper or bleach).  We stayed a while, gathering our courage to try again for groceries, this time at a  country store where we hoped to find a more seasoned and hopefully less intense group of shoppers than those at our first grocery stop.

Focus on the word “group” – the store was running over at the seams.  We got a few things and again agreed, “Let’s get outta here.”  Still, it was refreshing when the young lady at the in-store bank said, ‘I’m going home, I’m turning off my phone and the TV.  I’m sick of this Corona Crap.  It’s all Fake News, anyway.”

So nice to find bits of sanity amid madness.  While so many people seem to be embracing a panic over what is actually not that different than the flu bugs we faced last year and the year before, and the year before . . . , there are plenty of us who are sitting and watching, bemused and amazed.  As one young man said to us, “It’s like the stupidest, cheesiest apocolypse story ever, only stupider and cheesier.”

Exactly.  But no editor would buy this story.  “No way,” the editor would say, “would people act this crazy over this threat.  It’s the flu.  Something we dread, something we definitely want to avoid, even something dangerous.  But still, at the end of the day it’s the flu.”

So, yes, let’s all go home and stay inside and hide.  Not from the flu, but from the tangible, dark, mucky and almost overwhelming presence of fear.  “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind” – II Timothy 1:7.

This Spirit of Fear has definitely precluded power and a sound mind in many.  Let us not join them. Rather, let us pray a binding of the Spirit of Fear, and call on God’s promise to bind in heaven what we bind on earth – Matthew 16:19 and 18:18.  Amen.

P.S.  Please consider joining me in another prayer – that He turns what the enemy intends for evil, to good.  Also, join me and so many others in reading Psalm 91 aloud day in and day out.