Is there any place I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!”
~ A Psalm of David
Almost a decade and a half ago, our eldest got invited to go on a mission trip to China. He was mid-teens at the time. He was almost six and a half feet tall and really stood out in a crowd. It was a very different country then. He received a lot of training about how to represent what he believed without endangering himself or others. It felt important and moderately dangerous there in all the best ways possible.
He missed two weeks of school and part of his varsity baseball season. While he was gone, I had a conversation with another baseball dad. He asked a simple question, “Do you think it is safe to allow your son to go to a dangerous place like that?” My answer came immediately and felt like it was referenced beyond me.
“There is no safer place for him than in the will and love of God.”
Strangely, I had never really thought much about the danger he was in being there. He felt called to it and I honestly felt that he was far safer there than in a car rolling around here on a Friday night.
That season came to mind as we returned to South Africa. People asked if it was safe or if we ever felt like we were in serious danger there. You don’t have to venture very far online to see the incredible difficulty the country is enduring and the associated risks there, but my answer was a version of the same.
“There is no safer place than in the will and love of God.”
And I am seeing that same sense of fear everywhere. The world is changing with momentum and we are feeling increasingly unsafe. Ironically, the answer for many seems to be that a safer place can be found there.
It feels like one country may be safer than another.
That one state, apparently, is safer than the others.
Those rural areas are safer than the more populated ones.
Small towns are better than big.
But in a world where all information is universally available, all fear, dissonance, rage, injustice, etc. is being shared and felt by everyone at the same time, there is no safer “there”. So the weight of the world is heavier, we are experiencing more of it, and the systems (relational, societal, spiritual) are not as available to help us deal with the load. Should anything that happens surprise us?
I am resting in the assurance I told that baseball dad and those folks asking about South Africa. I am increasingly convinced that I cannot escape the danger there, but I can always find comfort and safety in the will and love of God right here.
Consider
Do you feel safe?
Are you fighting that urge to run away, check out, or move?
Where do your hope and sense of safety come from?
Are you placing it on governments, policies, parties, or places?