Security

Nothing can ever be safe. There is nowhere we can run or hide, nothing we can do to ultimately ensure safety. When I was a child, I thought that when I was older, I’d just live in a house with huge lasers and sensors to find and kill any spiders or other bugs that came into the house; that way I’d be fine! I’d be safe from the things I didn’t like. The sad truth is that we can never achieve safety. How many films involve people trying to run to safety but being followed or pursued? Today I watched the Bodyguard, which is kind of along those lines; others include Bourne Identity and loads more I have forgotten the names of (one with Harrison Ford springs to mind…). Anyway the point is that I think one of the scariest things in life is that no matter what we do, we can never be truly safe.

All the money in the world can’t prevent tragedy. Having millions of bodyguards doesn’t make you invincible. How is it possible to have security when nothing can be safe? Simple. By not placing our security in such things. Why place security, value and worth in things which we could lose tomorrow? It’s really easy to feel secure because of friends, relationships, possessions, money, abilities, self-image, and perhaps it’s even easier to feel insecure about all of the above. Ultimately these things are all expendable and could disappear at any minute, as could we.

I want to be like Horatio Spafford (great name!). He was a Chicago Lawyer in the 1860s. In 1870 his only son died at the age of four from scarlet fever. In 1871, all of his investments and life savings were destroyed during the Great Chicago Fire. In 1873, the family planned a holiday in Europe. Horatio was delayed by some business, so his wife and four daughters set off first, to be joined later by Horatio. On November 22^nd 1873, the ship carrying the five women crashed and sank, killing 226 people, including his four daughters. When his wife reached England, she sent this telegram ‘SAVED ALONE, WHAT SHOULD I DO?’. As soon as was possible, Horatio boarded a ship to sail to England to be with his wife. As the ship passed the spot where the shipwreck had occurred, he wrote this song-‘It is Well with My Soul’

I wonder, if I too went through what the Spafford family did, would I be able to sing, let alone write that song. I wonder what it actually means to find security in something outside of the known. Is there a way we can have a security that can never be taken away?

I think the answer is yes.