The Stove Top

     I've grown up as a kid learning what is safe and what is not. It's not always an easy thing to learn, but it's the "don't take candy from strangers", "don't touch the stove top" type safety that we learn as kids. This is important, and a lot of the safety we learn in North America is learnt from our parents our experience. Yet, as we grow older there are things we tend to grow out of, and things that we need to learn anew. It's rarely explicitly communicated but are implicitly picked up. The real question is, are these lessons that we are picking up about what a "safe life" looks like what we should be living by? What is a proper balance between being smart and safe, and relying on God to supply safety and keep us safe.
    For me, this question goes back to the sovereignty of God. what you believe about the Sovereignty of God will change your part in how you remain safe. How many times do we back away from things because of the lack of safety? One of the most interesting things about the bible is the definition of safety that guys like Paul, and Jeremiah seem to have. There are many puzzling texts that seem to point to God's protection and safe-keeping, even in the midst of physical harm coming upon them. For example, in Jeremiah chapter 20, Jeremiah has just been beaten by Pashur (a man of the temple I might add), and yet in his words to God, Jeremiah points to a God that is fighting on his behalf. He points to God rescuing "the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked". All of this after being beaten, whereas I think if this happened to me today I would probably be asking God where he is and why he is allowing this to happen, like I think many would.
    The sense that one gets in reading these words and some of the words of Paul is that safety is not about physicality. They are not as worried about physical harm, as they are about God keeping them from evil. While it is easy to present a sort of dualism that can separate physical and spiritual safety, that is not the point but the point that I am trying to make is that they don't think of safety in the same way we do. They are more worried about doing God's will than whatever might happen to them. They are fully convinced that as long as they are working to further the kingdom then God will be faithful in his plan.
    The faith in the plan and sovereignty of God is something that we don't really look at in our Western context. It is something that I have had the privilege of understanding just a little bit more this past year. If we can't trust in the plan of God, and if our idea of the plan of God is simply 'good' things according to us, then we are not really having faith in his plan. We too often mistake God's plan for what we think his plan should be. There are definitely promises in the Bible that God will give us good gifts, and that he wants what is best for us. I don't know if that means that it is always going to be in the way we imagine it. What if getting what is best requires something that we don't understand first! The tendency is to deem what we don't understand as not good, and thus we try and get what is good by our standards. I want to say above all, that the moment that we think we understand God is the moment that we think too highly of ourselves and too low of God.
   Bottom line, one thing that I need to learn and I think much of our society needs to learn is how to rely on the safety and sovereignty of God. It involves trust when things are not going well and availability when things are going well. Our view of safety might not be exactly what it should be. This does not mean we are to act stupid, but it means that sometimes our own logic tends to be taken at higher value than our trust in God. These two need to work together, not in opposition.
   Hopefully we can keep trusting in God to guide us and not our alarm system that was put in place when we were kids. Stay safe, at least God's definition of safety. Remember the worst they can do is send you to him.