The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

(Deuteronomy 33:27)

 

The bare essentials to sustain life re­main about the same across the years: food and drink, shelter and clothing. Styles change of course – the color and cut of clothes. The traditional forms of home architecture gives way to more contemporary styles of shelter. And cooking – well, cooking never has been what it used to be – neither the turnip greens cooked all day long with ham hock on the jack side of a wood-burning stove, nor a warmed over T-V dinner done in a jiffy. But life’s bare essentials do remain across the centuries. We may cut them differently, assemble them in new arrangements, and package them to suit the season, but the basic ingre­dients themselves don’t go out of style. Only the way we serve them gets outmoded.

Now one of these essentials, one of these basic re­quirements for human welfare, is a thing called security or refuge. Since man arrived on earth, it seems, he’s been hunted or harassed by something. He’s always fleeing some enemy, seeking to escape some catastrophe, and what he desperately needs to survive is an adequate haven or refuge.

The time was when man sought sanctuary from the saber-toothed tiger, the cave bear and the mammoth. Then a cave with a heap of stones piled in the cave’s mouth, or a fire burning at the entrance sufficed. But times changed and soon man saw it was not the wild beasts of the earth he had most to fear and flee from in order to survive, but rather his own kind. Some satisfactory sanc­tuary must be found from the anger that flared in the heart of his brother. So cities of refuge were appointed in ancient Canaan to which a man in peril of his life might run and remain secure from the threats of his enemy. The Holy Place in the old Taber­nacle and in Jerusalem’s Temple offered asylum to harassed humanity. So also even into the 16th century in England, certain churches were designated special sanctuaries such as Beverley and the Broad sanctuary at the West End of Westminster Abby where a man might flee when threatened with public justice or private ven­geance and be held by law to be untouchable.

 

Modern man is no different from his first primitive ancestor. He still has the basic elemental need of sanctuary. Even yet man is hunted. And sometimes it seems that man to­day is more hunted and harassed than ever be­fore, that all human progress and clever cul­tural advance man has made has succeeded only in making him more and more vulnerable to more and more forces which relentlessly hunt him down.

It is not the wolf at the door, nor the hot breath of the pursuing kinsman upon his neck seeking blood vengeance anymore, but it is the drinking driver that is about to run him down at the street corner, or the mugger that lurks in the shadow of his own door-way, or the burglar that steals his treasures. The miraculous mass communication media invade his home and assault his imagination with vio­lence and crime, and insult his intelligence with advertisements he doesn’t believe, but that seduce his subconscious with hidden persuaders to buy what he doesn’t want and can’t afford. And now inflation, that enemy within the econ­omy of the good American way of life, that traitor inside the ranks of modern man’s army of protectors, threatens his security and shatters his bulwarks of defense. Even yet, in this advanced day, sanctuary or refuge is an elemental, essential need of man.

But where now can refuge be found? Surely at last man has been hounded out into the open where no bomb-shelter will suffice for his body nor cleft in the rock for his soul against the physical and financial and psychological enemies which pursue him.

There is a word from Moses spoken a long time ago, of remarkable contemporary relevance concerning man’s endurably reliable sanctuary: “Tile Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Full significance of this highly pictorial and emotionally charged language comes only with understanding the his­torical situation in which these words were first spoken.

Moses, the leader of his people was about to die. It was an unthinkable thing. That courageous deliverer of his people, that in­trepid explorer of the wilderness, that tender shepherd of a fearful and disobedient nation, that stern lawgiver and judge was about to take leave of his nomadic people, and that before they reached their promised land.  Moses sensed their fears and uncertainties. He could imagine some of the dangers that lay ahead. He recognized the threats that would arise from within Israel herself.

So, in his last message to the people of God, he points them to where real sanctuary is always to be found in any wilderness wandering in any century: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and un­derneath are the everlasting arms.”

 

There is deep wisdom here, not only of the understanding of God’s sufficiency to meet man’s most elemental needs, but also an awareness of the ultimate nature of man’s most dire enemy. Though man has been hunted and harassed and bedeviled by many enemies in various forms across the wasteland of the years, always his greatest harasser and most formidable adversary in any century is man himself.  Eric Linklater called his autobiography, the Man Upon my Back. (Wm. Barclay)

This seems strange, squirrel-cage logic, to talk of man running from himself, seeking sanctuary from the torments and vengeance of his own soul, but this is just the sort of snake pit every man finds himself in.

At first it looks as though it is a man’s particular situation that is so adverse for him personally. His burden is so much heavier than other people have. Smiles he sees on the faces about him, but all he can feel is sweat and tears. Satisfying sanctuary must be for him a haven to which he can flee from his pre­sent situation.

But a closer scrutiny and an honest eval­uation will always reveal that all is not sweetness and light in anybody’s situation. Facts forever make it clear that it is never the size of the burden, nor the distance we must carry it, nor the time it takes which is our biggest problem, but rather our attitude toward it.  If our attitude is that of rebellion or resentment or mere stoical endurance in the pride of our own soul, then that emotional pattern will wear us down and harass all our days.

It is the man upon my back who is my biggest problem.  The real enemy hunting, me down and about to destroy me is within, my wrong at­titudes about life.

Moses knew that the satisfying sanctuary man seeks is within, not only because there is where man’s chief enemy assails him, but also because there is the only point in time or eternity where God can meet man and give him the safety and security he so earnestly searches. Only there can these spiritual enemies of man’s welfare be met and dealt with for man’s salva­tion. “The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.” “The Kingdom of God is within you, said Jesus. “In quiet­ness and confidence shall be thy strength,” said Isaiah, “in rest and returning ye shall be saved.”

But to talk like this makes man’s basic need seem so simple of fulfillment, so apparent and almost automatic. Not so at all. Though man’s true sanctuary is nearer than breathing and closer than hands and feet, though he need not race across the fields or scale a high hill or fight his way through heavily fortified terrain to reach his strong fortress, it is not always easily attained.

Howard Thurman describes the average man’s difficulty: “How to get beyond one’s anxiety and trouble to the center of one’s own spirit is one of the most formidable hurdles to ser­enity and inner peace.” For one thing there is so much alien soil within every one of us upon which the Christian trespasses at his own peril.

 

There is a natural patch in my personality called resentment, or the nursing of my hurt feelings toward others, over what they have done or have not done to help me with my problem.  But resentment is a field off-base for the Christian, dangerous ground where we shall never find help. Many a one has fallen into a pit there and been destroyed on that treacherous terrain.

Bitterness is also alien soil in my soul.  Refusal to accept the unacceptable – “Why did this have to happen to me?” There is no sanc­tuary for us in bitterness. When we stumble into that wasteland let us hurry out as fast as we can for it is a desert place filled with dead men’s bones. Bitterness will devour us from the inside out.

Hostility is alien spiritual soil for us too. The “No Trespassing” sign is always up. Stay out. Whenever we feel ourselves extremely antagonistic toward someone and critical of him, be he close kinsman or remote celebrity, we should ask ourselves, “What does this hos­tility tell me about myself? Here is a symptom of a sick personality and I’m the one who is running this emotional fever. What does it reveal about my condition?  What catharsis of the soul is indicated for me right now? For­giveness of the one against whom I have up such a head of steam? Is it that I need to pray for him repeatedly until love can replace my hatred and helpfulness can take over my criticism?

Or is confession the surgery of the soul this emergency indicates? Am I critical of and hostile toward another because I see in him what I hate and despise about myself which is a personal abscess to which I have refused to put the lancet of a frank confession?”

Selfishness is also alien soil within the soul of each one of us. The strange paradox about the way each one of us is made is that the more we search for security through selfish hoarding of this world’s goods, the more threatened we feel, while if only we will concern ourselves with using what we have to serve the needs of others more hard-pressed than we are, the more spiritual security we begin to enjoy.

Yes, there is much alien soil within upon which we dare not put our feet or we will lose our way to the sanctuary of our souls.

Our true sanctuary is prepared by God himself, and it is His almightiness of love and grace that makes it our one sure last resource, yet its approaches are in our keeping. Though the sanctuary is within, its defenses are without and are repaired or laid desolate by the way we use our routine days.

 

A strong conviction about regular church attendance every Sunday may seem very juvenile in the modern world, even a mechanical and un­spiritual attitude about religion, and yet, how often the record shows that when the storms sweep across the sea of life or the enemy attacks it is those who frequent the Lord’s House on his day that sail on with a remarkable steadiness and purposefulness when other ships are sunk.

And pushing back the clutter and shutting out the noisy distractions for long enough each day to achieve what the Quakers call: “center­ing down in God”, by a few moments of faithful use of scripture and prayer, may not seem so important when listed alongside all the engage­ments to be kept and errands run, but it may well prove to be the one urgent discipline within our Power to perform which will keep re­paired and open that little stairway up to God.

“The eternal God is thy refuge, and under­neath are. the everlasting arms.”   The sure refuge, the soul’s secure sanctuary, is the Eternal God, but we must come, choosing the way He has prepared through His grace to all mankind in Jesus Christ our Lord.