The Ultimate Safe Place!

The phrase "safe place" or "shelter in place" is familiar, especially to the millions who live in or near America’s "tornado alley." It is sometimes necessary to identify and equip the room or closet or other space in our houses that would offer the most strength and protection from the horrible event of a tornado bearing down on us. A "safe place" is a great idea, and has saved many lives. But then again, safe places sometimes prove to not be safe enough. When nature’s equivalent of a bunker-bursting bomb (an F-4 tornado) lands on top of your house, there is no space that is safe. 

The world-wide Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated fear and insecurity. Human beings long for the ultimate safe place, a place of protection strong enough to guarantee freedom from hurt and harm. The Bible describes such a place – it’s called Heaven! If we interpret Revelation 21-22 as the apostle John’s inspired description of Heaven (which millions over the centuries have done), the breath-taking and imagination-stretching words we read there "blow the mind" and tingle the spine! 

According to John those in Heaven will be with Jesus forever in a sin- free zone no longer dominated by the devil (22:3). Heaven is a place where "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away" (21:4). 

Wow! No sickness, no sorrow, no crying, no dying! No funeral homes or hospitals in Heaven. No operating rooms, no nursing care or assisted-living facilities. No home health care services or cancer treatment centers. No hip or knee-replacement procedures. No open-heart surgeries or stints in arteries. No pharmacies, no Coronavirus pandemic or any other kind of thing that harms or threatens the purity and holiness and health of that place and those who dwell there. No tears, no fears, no worries, no problems. Further, no terrorists or thieves will threaten inhabitants of God’s holy city, for it has "a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angles at the gates" (21:12). The ultimate safe place!

Here’s the kicker – if you are reading these words you are not in Heaven yet! We’re still on Planet Earth where Satan and sin and sickness and sorrow and all the stuff that scares and threatens to hurt us is never too far away. What to do? 

Before space is gone, consider this. In an address to the British Commonwealth from a palace in London in the trying days after the close of World War II, King George VI closed with these words: "I said to the man at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown.’ He said to me, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand in the hand of God, and it shall be to you better than the light, and safer than the known.’ " Those remarks are quoted by leading Christian writer, Ravi Zacharias, on page 53 of his book Can Man Live Without God? After the quote Zacharias adds, "As he [the king] spoke, the people were unaware that he was dying of cancer. Those words were to become an anchor in his own time of need." What anchors you in our own trying times?

In a passage about Heaven, the apostle Paul called Christians to "walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor.5:7). Is there anything "safe" about what we see around us if we leave faith in God out of the equation? What "safe place" on earth can compare to what the Bible tells us about Heaven? There is none. The ultimate safe place is Heaven. It’s safer than any place we know.

     by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN