What is "Safe"?

November 17, 2008

I went with Mom to go visit my brother today. On the way home I heard a song I hadn't heard before. It started out talking about a baby and how, though the storm was raging outside, the baby was safe in her mother's arms. I wasn't able to listen as closely as I would have liked, but I would guess there is probably an analogy there about us being safe in God's arms.

That's a nice thought. And our pastor always says that God is safe. I don't think God is very safe. Aslan is not a tame lion. I am guessing the truth of the statement lies in our definition of "safe". In God's arms, what exactly are we safe from? Famine? Bankruptcy? Hunger? Homelessness? Illness? Suffering? Pain? Rejection? Loneliness? Heartache? I don't think so.

In reality--that is, God's reality--yes we are safe. He is the master potter. He may remake us, and in the end, we will be exactly what He intended us to be; however, the "remaking" will not feel very safe. Jeremiah 18: 3-5 says, "So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him."

So what ARE we safe from, if even in the master potter's hands we can be marred? Certainly we are not safe from pain, from demolition, from rebuilding from the ground up...

I attended a church throughout all my teenage years, and I made many close friends there--at least I thought I did. But from all of those people that I loved, very few still love me--or even remember me. When I run across them, they aren't interested in me at all. It makes me question whether I ever really fit in. Not that it matters, really. It's just hard when your perception doesn't seem to jive with reality. You start to question your sanity a little bit. It was the same with my high school "friends". It's the same with some of my biological family as well.

So for ME, what I am safe from in God's arms is a world that disowns me or that says I don't have the right parents, the right financial status, the right manners, the right connections, the right upbringing, the right car, the right clothes, the right smell. My God made ME exactly as I am, and He accepts ME, exactly as I am, exactly where I am, exactly how I smell, and exactly how I dress. The world may reject me, but the Creator of the world accepts me. The world may disown me, but my Father in heaven has adopted me.

I am safe in that I will not get to the end of my life and look back and say, "What did I accomplish?" because even if I have been marred in the potter's hands, as long as I remain in the potter's hands, he will reshape me into a usable vessel, as seems fit to him. And the potter will never discard me, deeming me unusable. I may not look like what I want to look like. I may not be the vessel that I would have chosen to be. But I will be a vessel, "as seems fit to him".

And I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the potter's hands....