A better refuge

I saw this amazing picture of two hippos fighting. It is a fearsome beast and one of the deadliest animals around, second only to the mosquito.

Aside from being a really angry, territorial beast, the hippo only really feels safe in water, so if you come between it and its watery refuge, it will charge you down. That is especially true if your actions leave it feeling vulnerable or bewildered. It rarely stops to check anyone's motives, just charges. Very few have survived a hippo attack.

God has worked with me long enough and I in turn have worked with others long enough, to know that we all have a bolthole, a place of refuge that we run to when life doesn’t make sense. Whether it is a passive place like the hippo's pool or an active place as in its anger and territorial-ism. 

I acquired my patterns of retreat in my childhood, when the terrors in our home drove me into my inner thoughts. There I tried to reframe my reality. In that altered landscape I was always the hero.

The problem with going into that cave to work things out was that in so doing I excluded God and slowly built up defensive walls that held me captive to my own thoughts and fears. I had to deal with that to find answers in God. I had to let Him in or rather He had to call me out.

We all have our own defense mechanisms. Some retreat behind their own intellectual prowess, which they will do if experience reinforces its value. Others hide behind anger or insularity. Many turn to substances when their own internal coping mechanisms fail.

To some extent, the brain is wired to cope. It has some incredible resources for doing so. A notable one is denial. I have faced two life-class crises, but I responded differently in both situations, a reminder to all that there is no model for grief. It is specific to our experience and life-stage.

Anyway, in the second crisis, I saw denial in all its glory. I could not accept or reconcile myself to what had happened, as it so shocked my system that my mind blocked it out completely. If my counselors had been more skilled, they would have known where I was in my grief cycle and guided me through it. Instead, anger and withdrawal followed, as Kubler-Ross predicted.

Now it interests me that the place where they buried Jesus was Golgotha or “the skull”: a cave in the shape of a skull. Well, our skulls are our caves, where our thoughts lurk around and strive to make sense of the world around us. Inputs come in through our senses, but the mind then interprets such stimuli in the best way possible, to facilitate our survival - even if it has to lie to us.

The problem is that the more we cope the less we lean on God. It is a simple trade off. I have faced some wounds of late and I had to take the issues by the scruff of the neck, surrender it God and say, “No, I will not relive this or let it hold me captive”.

Peace returned as I surrendered those issues to the providence of God. I am tired of running into my cave. Elijah, David, Moses and Paul, all had to leave their caves to make an impact on the world around them. When they did, the risen life of Christ ignited them for His divine purpose, to leave whatever He buried there, fixed in the past. They never looked back.  

By taking thought, we cannot add a cubit to our stature, Matthew 6:27. Our thoughts are all about us holding on to the reigns where we need to surrender those reigns to Him. We cannot alter life or its realities, nor can we re-imagine life, but in Jesus, we can change our responses to life and our perspective on God’s sure and safe hand in our lives.  

Our mental refuges impede us and take us out of the game of life, but when Jesus is our refuge, He goes with us on our continuing journeys. His way is not a static bolt hole, where we lay up in fear. His way is dynamic: a table set in the midst of our enemies. 

(c) Peter Missing: bethelstone@gmail.com