Seize the Moment – Day 535
Protect the Public Health!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Friday, September 3.
Is public health important to you?
Leviticus 13 is all about the public health. It explains how to ensure the community’s safety from contagious skin diseases. While the English word used to translate the original Hebrew is leprosy, modern scholars believe that it originally included a multitude of skin diseases.
When a person had symptoms, he would go to the priest who was tasked with diagnosing the wound through the size and location of the diseased area, including the color of the skin and hair in it. The priest decided if the person needed to be quarantined. If so, the infected person would go to isolation for seven days before reexamination. To be declared clean of the contagion the marks could not have spread and must have visibly healed over the course of 14 days of quarantine.
From Leviticus 13:45-46, listen to the lengths God’s Word went to protect the public health:
As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, “Unclean! Unclean!” He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
It is so painful to read these words as I write this devotion during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we have had to experience the quarantine of so many of our friends and family. Truly, these are difficult and dark days!
God’s Word is always relevant even though it was written thousands of years ago in such a different cultural context. God’s Word is applicable to our personal lives and for the common good!
Seize the moment and trust God for every area of your life. Let us pray for the public health and that we will be a part of seeing our communities thriving to the glory of God.