Hiding in the right place

I don't recall my age at the time, but it would have been while I attended primary school. I was at home with my sister, our parents were away, and I made a very big mistake that could have had a fatal end.

A few days before, my parents had bought two sets of large pampas grass, each in its own very tall vase.

For whatever reason, I used a matchstick to light a piece of the pampas grass from one of the vases. It quickly caught fire and burned the entire pampas grass in that vase. Fortunately for me, only the grass was destroyed, though the wall beside it was scorched.

Immediately I understood what that meant and hid in my room in fear of punishment. We have all made mistakes where we genuinely did not understand the gravity of our actions and realized it only when it was too late, and have always sought a way of escape, a place to go or someone to turn to, so that we can avoid the consequences of our actions.

There are moments in life when our actions hand us consequences that we fear to accept. Sometimes life is not fair to us, and as we try to survive, as we try to do our best to overcome, our actions just make things worse. Karen Clark Sheard reminds us in her song "A Secret Place" that God has provided us with a place of refuge from the many ills and cruelties of life.

There is a history behind having a secret place of safety, which demonstrates how much God cares for us. When someone had caused an unintentional death, they could seek safety at one of six cities of refuge, and for as long as they stayed inside, the person seeking revenge could not harm them. Or if someone was in fear for their life, they could grab the horns of the altar, and while they did this, no one could harm them. We see Adonijah doing this in 1 Kings 1:50. His refuge was found at the altar in the sanctuary. Psalm 91:1 speaks about this secret place as a refuge in God when it says "Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." (NIV)

Some storms come from our actions and others from life being harsh and cold. No matter the cause, we still need a refuge. During my most challenging moments, when I could not find solutions to my problems, I lost all hope and became anxious. Psalm 27:5 reminds us that God is our way of escape: "For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock." (NIV)

There were times when, in trying to solve my problems, I realized that all my efforts were going nowhere, and the more I tried, the worse things became. It was only when I remembered how God had been with me in the past that I understood that I had to let go and seek peace in prayer, to find what the song calls "A place of peace where love abides."

This is not about avoiding accountability. It is about trusting God to solve our challenges no matter how difficult, no matter what we have done or who is against us. There is nothing too hard for God, and no place from which He cannot make a way of escape.