Stay safe

The Lord will be a refuge (Joel 3:16) 

Where do you feel safe? As I sit at my desk and write, I see a pair of robins hopping past the study window. They have that alert yet confident look that birds acquire who feel at home in your garden. Since the neighbouring cat has left, I have noticed it increasingly with our garden birds. There's a black bird that has become almost tame and mistakenly ventured into the utility room in search of food. The pair of nesting greenfinches have become a little more visible, occasionally flying straight into the nest, rather than sidling in 2 feet below as if to say, Me, no I don't live here, just testing this branch for perching properties. The pigeons waddle across the lawn, like supertankers in a shipping lane, moving slowly whatever the provocation to fly. Our bird-friendly efforts are working, we just need to pray the next neighbour doesn't have a cat.

This morning I found myself idly reading the blog of an African-American woman. She feels safe nowhere. Not in her home, not in the street, not at the shops or in a cafe, not even in church. Nowhere. She writes about how her therapist has every gift of sympathy but is incapable of understanding. She is educated and white and the world belongs to her and can never see what it means to be poor and black and frightened everywhere you go.

Without a place of safety, everything breaks down. We cannot rest, we cannot think, sometimes it feels like we cannot breathe. It is strange to me how often those gifted with safe homes do not understand this. They deliberately make work uncomfortable in the belief that people will work harder when on edge, not realising that often work is a person's only safe place. Even teachers I have known make classrooms into frightening places in order to force an extra ounce of effort out of a pupil, not having any clue that what the young person most needs is safety, a place to think, a place to rest their weary head.

So the Lord's promise of a refuge for his people is not a small thing. They have found the world frightening at every turn. Enemies have attacked them, their land has failed them, their fields are barren and all they had is burnt up. Then the Lord promises a stronghold. He will be their place of safety. 

In this lockdown, while some have retired to their own fortress, others have found themselves in permanent jeopardy. They dare not go out for fear of death. They cannot rest at home. Their safe place, be it church or school, cafe or bookshop, spin class or coffee morning, is denied them. Filing for divorce has gone up 40%, mental health services are overwhelmed. They need a refuge. Let us pray that they find a Lord who is present in every home, on every street, in every land. Then they may find refuge.

A bird's eye view