A Place of Refuge

 

“Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge.”

—Psalm 57:1a

On extremely rare occasions when I was very young, my father’s family would gather at my aunt’s home. The cousins, who were for the most part strangers, would play together. The cousins delighted in playing the game “Hide and Seek.”

I greatly disliked the game. I actually disliked these visits with the cousins. As an only adopted child, I was used to playing alone. I also had to endure whispers from some of the female relatives about my origin that didn’t realize I already knew that I was adopted—as if adoption was some terrible disease. They would nod to one another and remark, “Of course he’s not really our blood. He’s not really a part of our family.”

In any case, when the game began I would try to find a place of refuge where, securely hidden from the cousins, I could safely avoid being found for as long as possible.

When the difficulties of life come barging into our lives, they often bring a terror far greater than a bunch of cousins he doesn’t really know to a five-year-old boy.

At such times we need a place of refuge, a hiding place. The Psalmist understood this need to find a trustworthy place of safety when he wrote these words in Psalm 57:1:

Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.

Yes! There is a safe refuge in time of distress. That refuge is found under the shadow of God’s loving wings. There we may calm our fears and catch our spiritual breath. There we can become renewed in the shadow of God’s Presence.

 

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