Where Will You Make Your Home?

For the last 10 years, a wren has made her nest in the hanging plant outside my bedroom door. Every spring, shortly after I hang the basket, I see the early evidences and I remove her bits of nesting materials. And she returns them. Because this is where she chooses to make her home, regardless of the danger, regardless of the water hose that will spray water and drive her from her roost, regardless of the noise and the running and the playing that will take place just feet away, she will sit there, and hatch her eggs, and tend her young, and leave again until next year. When she (or one of her daughters) will build again. I don’t think it is the safest place for her, particularly since I like my sleep in the morning and her chicks like the sound of their chirping. But, despite the fact it may not be the safest place she has chosen it. It is her home.

We choose our homes, too, a place of shelter made of bricks or wood, concrete and glass. We get a realtor and look at pictures and descriptions. We consider neighborhoods and likes and dislikes. And we decide where we will make our home. We don’t really tend to think about rain and wind and other threats in choosing where we will make our home.

But for the Hebrew people who first sang the 91st Psalm, choosing a home was not like our process of choosing a home. Their homes were caves in the side of rock formations. They looked for a home to keep them safe from wind and rain. They looked for an outcropping of rock to provide shade on sunny, dry days in the desert. They needed to be able to see a long way so that they can see if a threat was approaching. They built rocks up to create a fortress, high above the sandy valley below.

So, when they sang about living in the shelter of God and abiding in the shadow of the Almighty, the images that came to mind were of rock formations. Choosing to dwell in God is like choosing a safe cave high on the side of a cliff with an outcropping for shade and plenty of flat surface at the entrance to build up a fortress wall. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be threats, but it does change how those threats affect us.

When we are threatened, when we are going through a storm, when we are suffering, we need a place of refuge.

Yet a quarter of our country, 25% of Americans, identify themselves as “nones” – they have no religious affiliation. The majority of them believe in God, but they haven’t chosen to dwell or abide or make their home, their refuge in God. Katherine Ozment is a none. She was raised Presbyterian. She is now raising her family, and she wrote a book titled Grace Without God about her family’s life. Her son asked her, when he saw the Greek Orthodox congregation across the street singing and processing into the church on Good Friday, what they were doing, and then why their family didn’t do that. Katherine responded, “Because we aren’t Greek Orthodox.” To which he asked her “Then what are we?” “We’re nothing,” she responded.

So many of the people we interact with on a daily basis have chosen to build their nest just outside our doors. Katherine writes, “I knew right away that this was a terrible thing to say. And I sensed that I had let him down, not just in that moment but also in a larger, more important way.”

While she and her husband have chosen to raise their children without God. She writes, “Occasionally, I take myself to church. There’s a United Church of Christ a block from our house, and on the first Friday of each month it holds a Taize service. The ecumenical service lasts an hour and consists of singing simple, repetitive hymns while holding lit candles in the dimmed light of the cavernous church. There are ususally only about fifteen of us there, and we sit scarttered as pairs and singles through the pews. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, only the sound of our voices lifting up, I feel at once infinitesimal and valuable beyond measure.”

She finds refuge. She knows what it feels like to call to God, who answers and is with us in trouble.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen writes about finding refuge in her book My Grandfather’s Blessings. “Of all the ways that people commonly deal with suffering..few are places of refuge…..we can never hide from suffering. Suffering is a part of being alive. Hiding ourselves means only that we will have to suffer alone. In the presence of suffering, everyone needs to find refuge.” She tells about a collegue of hers, Louisa, a highly skilled physician who specializes in treating AIDS patients. This colleague keeps a picture of her grandmother in her home and sits [looking at it] for a few minutes every day before she leaves for work. Her grandmother was an Italian-born woman who held her family close….Once when Louisa was very small, her kitten was killed in an accident. It was her first experience of death and she had been devastated. Her parents had encouraged her not to be sad, telling her that the kitten was in heaven now with God. Despite these assurances, she had not been comforted. She had prayed to God, asking Him to give her kitten back. But God did not respond.

In her anguish she had turned to her grandmother and asked, “Why?” Her grandmother had not told her that her kitten was in heaven as so many of the other adults had. Instead, she had simply held her and reminded her of the time when her grandfather had died. She, too, had prayed to God, but God had not brought Grandpa back. She did not know why. Louisa had turned into the soft warmth of her grandmother’s shoulder then and sobbed. When finally she was able to look up, she saw that her grandmother was crying as well.

Although her grandmother could not answer her question, a great loneliness had gone and she felt able to go on. All the assurances that [her kitten] were in heaven had not given her this strength or peace.” Louisa calls her grandmother a lap, “‘a place of refuge. I know a great deal about AIDS,” she says, “but what I really want to be for my patients is a lap. A place from which they can face what they have to face and not be alone.’

God says through the Psalmist, “Those who love me, I will deliver. I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them. I will be with them in trouble.”

There is a temptation to hear the promise of God’s protection and shift control of nature’s laws and free will back to God. But, God doesn’t promise to intercede and keep us from all suffering. God promises to answer when we call and be with us in trouble.

God says, “ For those who love me, I will be the outcropping of rock that provides shelter. I will be the cave that provides refuge. I will be the fortress that provides protection. I will be the lap that provides comfort. I will be with them.”

That wren in the hanging basket outside my door has, without a doubt, chosen to dwell there. You and I have choices to make as well. Where will we dwell? Will we dwell in the shelter of the Most High? Will we abide in the shadow of the Almighty? It doesn’t mean that our lives will be problem-free. It doesn’t mean that we won’t face troubles. But, it does mean that we won’t be alone.

And as God’s people, we have been called to sing this song in our lives so that those who have chosen to build their nests just outside our doors can hear it and perhaps build their home in the shelter of the Most High, perhaps dwell in the shadow of the Almighty, perhaps come to say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.