Refuge

You see them everywhere, from rural fields to suburban yards. Fences come in many different styles, and just about everyone seems to have one. They represent safety and security, protecting our loved ones, making our yards into sanctuaries, and keeping our property safe. Did you ever think about the history of the fence? In many ways, fences have had a major impact on the development of modern civilization.

Whether it is for safety, wealth, or isolation purposes, there is no denying that fences still carry significant symbolic importance in many societies today. But they are also ubiquitous: Strung together, the world’s fences would likely reach the sun. Just taking the American West by itself, it is latticed by more than 620,000 miles of fence—enough to encircle the earth more than 75 times.

Who first came up with the idea of fences? There are certainly famous “fences” in ancient history, from the Great Wall of China to the Walls of Jericho. Fences became a feature of civilization as cultures transitioned from nomads to landowners and farmers. In a way, fences have laid the foundation of the modern world.

In the modern era, fences have continued to evolve, with the development of new materials and construction techniques. Today, fences are an essential part of any security system, providing both physical and psychological protection. They are used to protect everything from homes and businesses to government installations and military bases. Innovations such as electric fences, security cameras, and access control systems have made it possible to create highly secure environments.

These new technologies have also made it easier than ever to monitor and control who enters a particular area. Implicitly, the ability to access these physical barriers require some sort of credential — such as an invitation or pass — suggesting the presence of a system that excluded certain people from access.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture mentions fences, walls, hedges, and boundaries nearly 350 times. These structures serve literal purposes, such as defending cities, protecting livestock, and marking territorial boundaries. However, their symbolic significance is profound. Satan challenged God's protection of Job by referencing a "hedge" around him (Job 1:10). Jesus likened himself to a "good shepherd" who encloses his sheep in a protective fold (John 10:1-10). The New Jerusalem, described as having a wall, symbolizes a place of ultimate safety and exclusivity for the saved, while excluding the unrighteous (Rev. 21:27).

There’s a funny thing that happens when we finish a TV series that we love. We’re left with that bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye to characters who, in a semi-parasocial way, have become like friends. So, what do we do? We rewatch the entire series again, from start to finish. For many people, shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation or Friends become staples of comfort, like an old blanket or a warm cup of tea.

In a world that is constantly shifting beneath our feet, where nothing feels quite predictable, there’s something undeniably soothing about returning to a world where things rarely change. The same characters, the same jokes, the same arc we already know and love.

It begs the question: Why do we keep going back? The answer, in part, lies in a little thing called nostalgia—and it’s more powerful than we might think. Nostalgia can be summed up as a longing for a past that we associate with positive feelings.

According to research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, nostalgia can provide psychological comfort in times of stress, uncertainty, anxiety, or loneliness. It’s no secret that the real world seems increasingly chaotic. So, rewatching a familiar TV show provides that comfort and security, especially during moments when life feels anything but stable. The brain can relax, which in turn gives you that cozy, comforting feeling. You’re not tuning in to be surprised. You’re tuning in because you won’t be surprised.

So, the next time you find yourself wanting to watch Phoebe sing “Smelly Cat” or laugh at Liz Lemon’s fall into chaos for the umpteenth time, know that you’re not just watching a TV show. You’re seeking comfort in a world that feels anything but predictable. And in doing so, you’re finding a little piece of peace in the chaos.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the search for comfort, security, and knowing how things will end should lead us to Scripture. In them, God provides a sure hope in times of stress and the unshakeable hope that everything will turn out for our good.

Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and snow covered mountains, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear arises that it might blow you and your party right over the cliff. But in the midst of it you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure, but the awesome might of the storm rages on and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.

At first, there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished. Only the life-threatening part. There remains the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power.

God’s power is behind the unendurable cold of Arctic storms. Yet he cups his hand around us and says, “Take refuge in my love and let the terrors of my power become the awesome fireworks of your happy night sky.”

As nations across the globe reel from one crisis to another, the Collins English Dictionary has just revealed its 2022 word of the year to be “permacrisis.” “Permacrisis” is a noun defined by the U.K.-based publisher HarperCollins as "an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.”

A blog post on the Collins Dictionary website noted that the term rings true because of the war in Ukraine, climate change challenges, political instability, and the surge in inflation. He goes on to say the term embodies the "dizzying sense of lurching from one unprecedented event to another," as people wonder what new "horrors" might be around the corner.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Advent; Christmas; Good News - Anyone ready for some good news? And I mean perma-good-news? Well, that’s what the angels said they were bringing that first Christmas and it’s still the best news today! “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

A decade ago, the music industry saw a strange trend—a revival of millennials buying old-school vinyl records. In 2021, the format’s popularity surged in the US, selling 41.7 million units, up from 21.5 million in 2020. LPs outsold CDs for the first time in 30 years, as well as digital albums.

A Wall Street Journal article notes:

The spike has been driven, in part, by younger listeners nostalgic for an era when music—and maybe life in general—seemed more hands-on and fun. … Stressed out by fears of climate change, political strife and pandemic variants, a growing number of younger adults have been spending more time nesting and seeking refuge in their past. Many have fond childhood memories of parents playing vinyl albums in the 1980s and early 1990s, and they yearn to regain that feeling of security.

A clinical psychologist quoted in the article added, “For millennials who favor vinyl albums, the format may offer them control and stability. You can hold the vinyl, you’re responsible for making the music play, and perhaps it’s reminiscent of a more certain time in their lives. With vinyl, there are no decisions to make. You put on the record, you sit back and you listen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In stressful times like these we’re all looking for ways to “regain that feeling of security.”

Kenneth and Adi Martinez immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 2011. When given the opportunity to help a family of four who recently fled Afghanistan, they jumped at the chance. Kenneth said, “We know exactly what it feels like to come to a brand-new county with no family or anything,"

The government expects tens of thousands of Afghan refugees will come to the United States over the next year, and resettlement agencies are working with organizations and individuals like Kenneth and Adi to help the refugees find housing.

Kenneth, Adi, and their two small children live in the Seattle area, and offered their spare bedroom to the family from Afghanistan. Over the last month, they have been getting to know one another, with the adults cooking and the kids playing together. Kenneth said, “We are happy that we can help.”

In the book, The Zookeeper's Wife, author Diane Ackerman describes the brutal occupation of Warsaw, Poland by the Nazis. The Warsaw Zoo became a hiding place for members of the Resistance and Jewish refugees.

Keeping one person alive often required putting a great many in jeopardy. It tested them nonstop as they resisted both propaganda and death threats. Yet 70,000-90,000 people in Warsaw, or about one-twelfth of the city's population, risked their lives to help neighbors escape. Besides the rescuers and Underground helpers, there were maids, postmen, milkmen, and many others who didn't inquire about extra faces or extra mouths to feed.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Many working together, doing even a little, can do much to conquer evil.

Recently, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell traveled to Prairie Chapel Ranch to visit with former president George W. Bush and his wife Laura. The occasion? To celebrate the publication of a compilation of original portraits painted by the former president, and to spark a conversation around the subject of those portraits--immigrants to the United States.

When pressed upon the subject of immigration, Bush demurred, but eventually shared his thoughts:

I don't want to be prescriptive. I don't want to, you know, tell Congress how to do this or that. I do want to say to Congress, “Please put aside all the harsh rhetoric about immigration. Please put aside trying to score political points on either side.” I hope I can help set a tone that is more respectful about the immigrant, which may lead to reform of the system.

President Bush says he’s speaking out to help turn the temperature down on the debate:

The problem with the immigration debate is that one can create a lot of fear: They're comin' after you. But it's a nation that is willing to accept the refugee or the harmed or the frightened, that to me is a great nation. And we are a great nation.

Despite the hoopla over his book’s release, the former President is realistic about its prospects for potential policy proposals:

It doesn't [change policy]. But it's a part of hopefully creating a better understanding about the role of immigrants in our society. Mine is just a small voice in what I hope is a chorus of people saying, “Let's see if we can't solve the problem.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Not only are each of us God's handiwork, but so are others who potentially come to us for help. We must be vigilant to guard against false images of people for the purpose of spreading fear. Instead, we honor God as we pursue avenues for peace and flourishing for all of God’s children.

In the fall of 1943 German soldiers began rounding up Jews in Italy and deporting them by the thousands to concentration camps. Simultaneously a mysterious and deadly disease called “Syndrome K” swept through the city of Rome causing dozens of patients to be admitted to the Fatebenefratelli Hospital. The details of the disease are sketchy, but the symptoms include persistent coughing, paralysis, and death. The disease was said to be highly contagious.

But “Syndrome K” was different. There was no mention of it in medical textbooks, and outside of the hospital staff, nobody had heard of it before. It sounded similar to tuberculosis, a terribly frightening disease at that time. When the German soldiers went to raid the hospital, the doctors explained the disease to the soldiers and what lay behind the closed doors. None of them dared to go in. And that’s how at least a hundred Jews who were taking refuge at the hospital escaped death. “Syndrome K” was a made-up disease.

The disease was created by Giovanni Borromeo, the hospital’s head physician, to save Jews and anti-fascists who sought refuge there. Borromeo began providing Jews a safe haven in the hospital from 1938, the year Italy introduced antisemitic laws. In October 1943, the Nazis raided a Jewish ghetto in Rome. Many Jews fled to Fatebenefratelli, where Borromeo admitted them as “patients.” The refugees were diagnosed with a new fatal disease—“Syndrome K”—in order to identify them from the actual patients.

When the Nazis came to visit, patients were instructed to cough a lot whenever soldiers passed by their door. The ruse worked. “The Nazis thought it was cancer or tuberculosis, and they fled like rabbits,” said Dr. Vittorio Sacerdoti during an interview with BBC in 2004, sixty years after the event.

How many lives “Syndrome K” actually saved is hard to tell, but accounts vary from two dozen to over a hundred. After the war, Borromeo was honored by the Italian government by awarding the Order of Merit and the Silver Medal of Valor. He died in 1961 at his own hospital. He was posthumously recognized as a “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Israeli government.

Possible Preaching Angles: Lying; Protection; Racism; Rescue – In the tradition of Rahab (Josh. 2:1-24) and the Egyptian midwives (Exodus 1:10-22) lives were protected from an attempt to murder God’s people. Concealing the truth by telling a lie to protect innocent lives appears to be accepted by God during persecution and extreme situations.

Kim McClain, is a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies. She has traveled to hard-hit cities and towns to understand why people got killed in storms that she says "really should be survivable as long as people can get to the right shelter."

In an interview with NPR, McClain was asked to explain why people failed to heed weather warnings:

We give people days of alert that their general region may be threatened. But people are really savvy about this. They know that even if a region in general is at risk, that doesn't necessarily mean there will be a tornado that hits their house. So people wait until things get quite close until they make those calls. For tornadoes, they typically wait until they're under a warning and then there are just a couple of minutes. Then all they can really do is shelter in place.

People are doing what we call "confirming the threat." And they do this … on a continuous basis. They'll be watching, and maybe they'll go get their children. But they won't necessarily take shelter until things get a little bit closer.

Possible Preaching Angles: Human nature remains the same throughout history. Warnings were also given to the people of Noah’s time (Matthew 24:38-39), the people in Sodom (Genesis 19:14), and those who heard the message of Peter (Acts 2:40). Sadly, most ignored those warnings until it was too late.

In horror movies, the monster is scariest before you actually see it. For one local woman, that principle extended into the interior of her home. Washington County Sherriff’s Office responded to a 911 call from a woman who reported hearing a burglar locked in her bathroom. She saw shadows shifting under the door, and after officers appeared on scene, they heard a persistent rustling under the same door.

So, after issuing several commands to come out, and having brought in a K-9 unit for backup, they finally opened the door. "With guns drawn, deputies open the door to encounter the suspect … an automated robot vacuum," the sheriff's office said. “We entered the bathroom and saw a very thorough vacuuming job being done by a Roomba vacuum cleaner," Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Brian Rogers said.

The suspect was not taken into custody, however its likely to be sentenced to several months of continuous domestic servitude.

Potential Preaching Angles: In the eyes of God, the things we are afraid of are insignificant. Fears don't just make us scared, they can inhibit us from living out our calling. God commands us not to be afraid because nothing exists outside of God's control and God's enemies are impotent in comparison.

Bryan Stephenson, author of Just Mercy and founder of an organization that tries to help those unjustly convicted of crimes, was trying to free a man who was clearly innocent. About a dozen people had seen him when he allegedly committed the crime, but none of those people were allowed in the courtroom because they were African-Americans. So Stephenson complained to the judge, who reluctantly allowed Stephenson to admit a few of these eyewitnesses.

One older black woman named Mrs. Williams was chosen to represent this group. But there was another big problem: a huge German shepherd stood guard outside the courtroom. When Mrs. Williams, who was deathly afraid of dogs, saw the dog she froze and then her body began to shake. Tears started running down her face before she turned around and ran out of the courtroom.

Later she said, "Mr. Stevenson, I feel so badly, I let you down today. I was meant to be in that courtroom. I should have been in that courtroom." And she started to cry, and I couldn't console her. She said, "I wanted to be in there so bad. But when I saw that dog all I could think about was Selma, Alabama 1965. I remember how they beat us, and I remember the dogs. I wanted to move and I tried to move but I just couldn't do it." And she walked away with tears running down her face.

The next day her sister told Stevenson that Mrs. Williams didn't eat or talk to anybody all night. They just heard her praying all night long the same prayer: "Lord, I can't be scared of no dog. Lord, I can't be scared of no dog." The next morning she walked up to Stevenson and said, "I ain't scared of no dog. I ain't scared of no dog" and then she walked right past that huge German shepherd into the courtroom.

The courtroom was packed when the judge walked in and everybody rose and sat down—except Mrs. Williams. She told the entire courtroom in a loud, firm voice: "I'm here!" But Stevenson said, "What she was saying wasn't that she was physically present. She was saying, I may be old, I may be poor, I may be black, but I am here because I got a vision of justice that compels me to stand up to injustice. And that was when the tide for the case turned.

Kurt Gödel was a history-making logician and mathematician who died in 1978. In his later years, while working at the renowned Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he became convinced that someone was out to poison him. He relied entirely on his beloved wife, Adele, to cook his meals and to be his taste tester whenever they were away from home.

In 1977 Adele was hospitalized and could no longer help her eccentric husband. His friends tried everything to get him to eat, but he refused. Eventually the masterful logician succumbed—at the end, weighing just sixty-five pounds. According to the official death certificate, he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance." In plain language, he starved himself to death.

Possible Preaching Angles: We all have "faith" in something. But faith is only as good as the object we place it in. Gödel was obviously a brilliant person, but he believed so strongly that people were out to poison him that it overwhelmed even his will to survive.

In 1975, Roger Hart conducted a study on where children felt safe to play. He focused on 86 children between the ages of three to twelve in a small town in Vermont. Hart would follow the kids throughout the day, documenting everywhere the children went by themselves. He then took that information and made physical maps that measured the distance each child was allowed to go by themselves and what the average was for every age group.

Hart discovered that these kids had remarkable freedom. Even four- or five-year-olds, traveled unsupervised throughout their neighborhoods, and by the time they were 10, most of the kids had the run of the entire town. And the kids' parents weren't worried either.

Then several years ago (about 2014), he went back to the same town to document the children of the children that he had originally tracked in the '70s, and when he asked the new generation of kids to show him where they played alone, what he found floored him. Hart said, "They just didn't have very far to take me, just walking around their property." In other words, the huge circle of freedom on the maps had grown tiny.

Hart added, "There is no free range outdoors. Even when the kids are older, parents now say, 'I need to know where you are at all times.'" But what's odd about all of this, is that the town is not more dangerous than it was before. There's literally no more crime today than there was 40 years ago.

So why has the invisible leash between parent and child tightened so much? Hart says it was absolutely clear from his interviews. The reason was fear. Here's the conclusion to his new study: fear of the world outside our door narrows the circle of our lives.

Gordon MacDonald writes:

In the fall of 1956, I began my final year at the Stony Brook School, then a boys' college preparatory school in New York. Among the required courses that last year was Senior Bible, taught by the school's headmaster, Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, a man who required us to memorize 300 verses of Scripture over the course of that year. If he met a student on the pathway from the class room to the dining hall, he might say, "Gordon, give me John 13:34 please." He expected us to recite the verse from memory without faltering.

One of the passages he tasked us to memorize was Psalm 46. For days we memorized, recited, memorized, recited until the Psalm 46 was part of us. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble period. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea…."

In the spring of 1957, Senior Bible ended. We put our index cards away, graduated from Stony Brook, and went off to college. Occasionally, I returned to Psalm 46. As a pastor I preached on it a few times.

Then 56 years passed and my doctor called me. "Gordon, I have some difficult news for you. There's a tumor in the back of your head in the lining of the brain. It is not malignant, but it will have to come out." I have spent my whole life helping other people face doctor-call moments like these. Now it was my turn and the very first thing that began to surge through my mind was: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble period. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed…."

When I was a teenager, a brilliant and godly man pumped my friends and me full of Scripture. But now his effort is paying off. Thanks to Dr. Gaebelein and Psalm 46, I may be concerned and cautious, but I am not inclined to be fearful.

While staying alone in her convent, an 85-year-old Catholic nun got trapped inside a broken elevator for four nights and three days. She tried pushing the inside elevator door, but the electricity went off. She had her cell phone with her, but there wasn't a signal. Fortunately, she had carried a jar of water, some celery sticks, and a few cough drops into the elevator.

At first she said to herself, This can't happen! But then she decided to turn her elevator into a personal prayer retreat. "It was either panic or pray," she later told an interviewer for CNN. She started viewing the experience as a "gift." "I believe that God's presence was my strength and my joy—really," she said. "I felt God's presence almost immediately. I felt like he provided the opportunity for a closer relationship."

A grandfather took his daughter and the grandchildren to visit the zoo. As they visited the orangutan exhibit the only thing separating us from these awesome creatures that possess the strength of at least five men were panes of thick glass, each 20-feet tall. Two-year-old Trevor was amused at first by the orangutans' antics. Then one of the hairy beasts suddenly began to beat on the glass. Trevor leapt into the arms of his mother, crying, "I scared! I scared!" His mother tenderly took him, placed his little hand on the glass, and showed him that the glass shielded him from the animal, so there was nothing to fear. Afterwards, any time Trevor seemed uncertain, his mom would simply say, "Remember the glass."

The first-century church faced persecution at the hands of a powerful government bent on snuffing out her message, her influence. The fact that some had been beaten, imprisoned, even killed for their faith made them feel as though there was nothing at all that stood between them and the enemies of God's kingdom. Into these trying times the apostle Peter wrote them with a reminder that though it might not seem to be true at times, they were ultimately shielded by the eternal power of God that surpasses the temporary power of any other powers and principalities—that "the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast." (1 Peter 5:10) It was Peter's way of saying, "Remember the glass. Remember the glass."

What do you need in a pinch? What do you rely on in a disaster, when things are falling apart in your world? What do you trust in when your survival is at stake?

When Hurricane Gustav was bearing down on New Orleans in the Fall of 2008 and city officials had ordered residents to evacuate, one woman named Hattie decided to stay put. She told reporters that she had what she needed to ride out the storm, explaining, "I've got liquor, cash, food, ammo, and weed."