There are places to which we gravitate in unsettling times. They are safe and/or familiar places. Sometimes they are one and the same. When a home is filled with loving, supportive and healthy people AND is a place to which we go with frequency for comfort and encouragement AND we are able to help and bless others; then home is a place appropriately deemed, "safe, familiar and helpful". Things go array when we opt for places that are one of the three, but not all three. Let me explain.
If we seek places where no one can hurt us, where nothing injurious or painful is part of the landscape, then the upside is assured safety but the downside is the possibility of living a benign, unproductive life. Safe places are not what people always need. They include vaults and remote deserts. If we seek places simply because they are familiar, where "everyone knows our name", then the upside is predictability but the downside is the potential of tolerating unhealthy environments or lifestyles. Many abused women find themselves in the downside. They return to the familiarity of accepted abuse. They know of no other way. Finally, if we try to find helpful places, where we can bless and serve others, the upside is productivity and meaningful service but the downside is constantly seeing places as valued only if something productive happens there. In those instances, people become projects and life becomes centered in what you can do. Instead, the most valued places should be places of receiving and giving, of filling and emptying or restoring and being restored.
The most blessed places on earth are combinations of these: safe, familiar AND helpful. I pray that our home would not serve as an insulating vault, or a place where I can act out familiar but unhealthy vices, or a place where I can help people but am unable to be filled up and find rest. Having said that, I have found that many places can fit the criteria of being safe, familiar and helpful. I have found our home to be a unique combination of these things. Still, home is not the only place that fits that description. I believe Jesus’ own example communicate that. He was a peripatetic teacher, wandering in a way that would tax Google location finder. But, he seemed to find or make each place safe, familiar and helpful.
Well, through the years our home has been one of those places. Our children, grandchildren, guest tenants, friends and many strangers have always referred to it as a safe place. For Marlene and I, it is familiar in all of the right ways- a place where we find God and carry on patterns of life that are well centered, building us and others up. It is also a helpful place, where we can serve God and the hundreds that have joined us there.
Oddly, the hospital has become one of those places as well. I formerly had an aversion to spending even a solitary night in one. Here, we have found hallowed ground, restfulness, prayer closets, gentle and caring relationship and endless opportunities to serve. The fellowship has been sweet. Don’t get me wrong. I would love nothing more than to leave this place with a healthy and whole son. I know he would like to be released in full remission. That is our prayer. And, there is nothing very winsome about living here. The room is small and sterile. The art work leaves much to be desired. The neighbors are constantly moving in and out- a very unstable environment. There is little storage for personal belongings. The food has its limitations. But, a day does not pass without communing with God here. Every day provides opportunities to help those who need it desperately. And, we have settled into a little community of those with whom we have become familiar friends.
Most people cannot wait to get out of the hospital. And that is just the point. They are doing little more than waiting to get out. My prayer is that we find and make places throughout life and life’s unusual and trying circumstances where God is present and working through us. I pray that we look beyond wanting to "get out" and look to what God can make out of the most uncomfortable place. He made much out of a manger and a tomb. They are rather ordinary and unwanted places, but our most sacred. May God make sacred what is otherwise considered ordinary and unwanted.