Morning Inspirational word

Good morning, dear friends, and welcome to another beautiful new week.

Growing up in a conservative home and town, where I could have easily been called "sheltered" by my contemporaries, was a difficult experience that I recall. Few things were, of course, worse than the idea of being sheltered for a group of youngsters who were itching to get out and see everything that the world has to offer. But the older I become and the longer I live, the more "shelter" seems like one of the most poignant and lovely depictions of life as it should be lived. Shelter is a gift to be accepted rather than a constraint to be avoided.

There are many different kinds of evil in our world that can take our happiness and destroy us from the inside out. It is a dangerous and chaotic place. We have the propensity to ramble through life without purpose, vulnerable to unforgiving circumstances that deplete and exhaust us. It makes sense, then, that one of the Bible's most recurrent metaphors is of the Lord acting as a shelter during a storm.

It is a tremendous blessing to have a place of protection and for safe refuge to become a normal part of your life, even though my teenage self may have fought against it. Occasionally, you receive this refuge from other people, like when parents give their kids a place to live. However, with the independence that accompanies adulthood, having a place to live is both a gift and a choice, a matter of will.

However, we are not required by the Lord to live under his shadow. Rather than that, he creates safe havens. Even if we have the freedom to stray in any direction under the pretext of "independence," we are reminded today that the Lord offers safety to those who, in humility and repentance, walk the narrow path and make their home in him.

---