Day 1 - Issue 27
Deuteronomy 33:27 NLT
'The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you.'
If God is my refuge, surely it’s a guarantee that my life comes with a ‘no difficulties’ guarantee? Experience tells a different story! Refuge offers a form of safety or shelter, temporary rather than permanent, offering relief from the challenge I confront. During the Balkans conflict, I was in Bosnia. I observed a remarkable Christian community protecting people from different ethnic groups from harm. They afforded a refuge in time of war, although it was neither secure nor permanent. Yet, while it lasted they were safe, free to worship and pray together in Christ. Safe, but in a constant state of impermanence as no one knew how long it might last.
Most of us look for some form of permanence in life. Every signal society sends from my first conscious moment is to seek the security that permanence appears to offer. Sadly, while such permanence seems appealing, it usually means that I choose not to change or to be open to change. And change is at the heart of discipleship. I have often discovered a rhythm of life that satisfies me, only to have everything thrown up in the air through a change in circumstance. My existing assumptions prove false and I’m in conversation with myself and God about my unsatisfactory circumstances. There is a constant tension as I wrestle with God over personal security and Christian growth. Even my experience of impermanence is located in a highly developed, wealthy nation where my basic needs for security, shelter and nourishment are met, unlike the instability of those lives I witnessed in Bosnia.
For me, refuge boils down to where I choose to place my hope and security. Is it in the apparent safety of my circumstances, nationality, financial health and well-being? Or is it, as scripture suggests, in God? Even as I discovered momentarily in Bosnia those many years ago, permanence is an illusion and life can change in an instant. Good news, God never changes (Hebrews 13:8).
QUESTION: Where do you take refuge from the storms that circle your life?
PRAYER: Lord, help me to move my sense of security from the temporary to the eternal, to you, my God.
