Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.
Dr. Richard Selzer is a surgeon and a favorite author of mine. He writes the most beautiful and compassionate descriptions of his patients and the human dramas they confront. In his book Letters to a Young Doctor, he said that most young people seem to be protected for a time by an imaginary membrane that shields them from horror. They walk in it every day but are hardly aware of its presence. As the immune system protects the human body from the unseen threat of harmful bacteria, so this mythical membrane guards them from life-threatening situations. Not every young person has this protection, of course, because children do die of cancer, congenital heart problems, and other disorders. But most of them are shielded—and don’t realize it. Then, as years roll by, one day it happens. Without warning, the membrane tears, and horror seeps into a person’s life or into the life of a loved one. It is at this moment that an unexpected theological crisis presents itself.
We know the soul-spirit can be injured, even maimed, but it is very nearly impossible to kill. You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it. You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and scorch marks of fear. But it does not die, for it protected by La Loba...
Corrupt and incompetent police officers have a long history of being protected by their colleagues, police internal affairs and the government.
I don't want to die. I deserve, certainly, the most extreme punishment society has, and I think society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me. That's the irony. What I'm talking about is going beyond retribution because there is no way in the world that killing me is going to restore those beautiful children to their parents and correct and soothe the pain.
Every one of us can do something about the truth. You can at least stand for the truth wherever you are. You can refuse to compromise the truth. Of course you can tell the truth. Truth could be proclaimed. Truth could be protected. There are so many responses to the truth that would please the heart of our master. Heaven awaits only your decision
As with all new inventions, there are upsides and downsides. The commercial drone is no exception. But until robust safeguards have been introduced to protect personal privacy from prying eyes in the skies, the true benefits to society of unmanned aerial vehicles will remain unrealised.
Recognize the light within you. That is the goodness. The unconditional love. The one that has protected you. Guided you to your highest calling. It is the stars in heaven, that remind us we are never alone. The night can never be so black, for every twinkle in the sky be that eye of the eternal blessing and for every beam off the moon tells you how soon the sun is off the horizon.
God holds us. We are protected by His grip in such a precious way that the good and the bad must pass through His fingers to us. No harm, fear, or pain can reach us without His allowance, and yet, it is a loving grip. A loving allowance we cannot understand until time has frayed our pride and tempered our heartbreak. And even then, our only answer may be to trust His love more than our understanding.
To build refuges of my own making is to construct fortresses of sand at ocean’s edge, where the relentless tides of time will leave my most magnificently constructed walls as perfectly flat sand. And now that I am subject to the very tides that destroyed these walls of mine, I am left with the reality that my single and sole refuge can only be the God who created both tides and sand.