Safe Room

Impending thunderstorms prompted the Spirit Lake Nation to announce locations for taking shelter last week. 

Many people planned to shelter in the sturdy recreation centers, and some of our church family planned to use the basement of the parsonage house as their place of safety. Everyone in our community formed a plan before we heard the first rumbles of thunder.

Thankfully, our area did not have the severity of damage that nearby communities experienced, and our safe rooms can be saved for another day.

We all yearn for a place of safety, for shelter from physical storms and metaphorical ones. 

The news has recently shown clips of Israeli families emerging from their safe rooms to homes damaged by Iranian missiles. It isn’t the first time the Israelites needed a place of safety.

After the ancient Israelites had conquered most of the Promised Land, they settled for a place of safety that harbored danger when they didn’t drive out the remnant of the Caananites. Repeatedly, in Judges 1, the writer reports, “but they did not drive them out completely.” 

They thought they were safe enough.

Later, in Israel’s history, Queen Athaliah thought she was safe enough when she killed all the rivals to the throne. Little did she know that one of her grandsons had been hidden from her. The place of safety of her own making wasn’t enough when that boy was crowned king.

Jonah the prophet thought he’d shelter himself from obeying God’s command as he scheduled a cruise to Tarshish (which was in the opposite direction from Nineveh!). He discovered that the only safe place for him was to be tossed into a raging sea, swallowed by a God-appointed fish, and carried inside that fish to his God-appointed destination. Even with seaweed wrapped around his head, he was safer in God’s hand than he had been in his own.

After the fall of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah went to live with Gedaliah, the governor appointed by the Babylonians. Because the Babylonians had appointed Gedaliah and he had survived the destruction of the city, he thought he was in a safe place. He didn’t listen when Jeremiah and others warned him that his life was in danger. Trusting his safe room didn’t prevent his assassination. 

I read all these accounts as the siren sounded over Fort Totten. 

Where is my safe room in the storms of life? Has it been of my own construction? Am I content to believe myself “safe enough” like the Israelites? Have I eliminated all threats like Athaliah? Have I insulated myself from all the dangers entailed in following Jesus, like Jonah? Like Gedaliah, do I rely on the protection of my country, my economic situation, or my past luck to save me?

There’s only One Safe Room. His name is Jesus. “I will say to the Lord, ‘My Refuge and my Fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’”

Perilous times call for a strong safe room. Have you trusted Him?