Like a Refugee--October 25, 2023"God is our refuge and strength,
Let's get the promise straight: God is our refuge through trouble, not our hall-pass to avoid trouble altogether.
The difference is important. God's love for us endures and sees us through the times when everything else in our lives feels like it's been shaken to its core. But that is not the same thing as saying, "If you believe in God, nothing in your life will ever get shaken like that." It does. Sometimes everything else comes crumbling down, and sometimes the waters really do rage and roar. Sometimes the things we thought were solid and unchanging buckle under pressure, and that reality does not mean God's love has faltered, faded, or given out on us. It means that God's love is not bound to the durability of anything else in our lives. There is no fine print, no expiration date, no set of cleverly-worded loopholes, and no escape clauses for God to squirm out of enduring it all with us. God's love doesn't keep us out of the turmoil and tumult--it holds us safe through all of that.
I suppose that's the implication of calling God our "refuge"--it means we're going to find ourselves in the position of refugees at some point and in some way in our lives. There will be times that the other things we had counted on for security (we don't have to list them all, but our money and investments, our property and possessions, our health and if we're lucky our health-care, and our relative insulation from the hardships of the world) fail on us. And when that happens, the Scriptures point us to God's love as a safe place to find shelter, like townspeople hiding inside the castle walls of a fortress while the war rages outside the gates (which is probably behind Martin Luther's use of the image of a fortress in his hymn inspired by these verses, which we call "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God). That's the picture: God is the castle who bears the incoming arrows and projectiles of the attacking enemy outside the walls, the one whose love endures all the bombardment and bears the damage for our sake. God is the shelter when the storm comes... but that is different than saying it will never rain. It's like that achingly beautiful lyric of Leonard Cohen, "Every heart, every heart, to love will come--but like a refugee."
It's important for our faith to get this clear, both to make sure we're not imagining Christianity as some kind of silver bullet or magic charm that keeps bad things from happening to us, but also because it reminds us that God is willing to bear the fury of whatever trouble or turmoil is swirling around us. The image of a refuge is exactly that of a place that gets beaten by the wind and hail so the people under its shelter are not hurt, or the walls of the fortress that keep the people inside safe from fiery arrows by absorbing their impact into its own stone. To say that God's love endures means that God is willing to bear all that damage and destruction for our sake. And that also means that, if you find yourself going through a time of stress and storm, it's not a sign that God has failed you or abandoned you. It means God is willing to go through it with you and bear the trouble along with you while you go through it.
Someone you cross paths with this week needs to hear that. Someone you will talk with could use the reminder that God will be with them through their storm at the moment. Someone you can check in with might just need your voice assuring them that if they feel like a refugee, fleeing from trouble to find some place to shelter them, that God has already signed up to be our refuge.
Whatever comes today, that's the promise of God. Whatever comes, God is our refuge and strength.
Lord God, help us today with the troubles roaring around us and in the world, and be a refuge for all who are in need of shelter from harm today.
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