When I go to the bible for an encouraging or needful scripture in the morning, like many people, I'll often simply ask the Lord to guide me to a passage that will apply to my present concern. Inevitably, He'll lead me to something that touches me deeply or gives me an affirmation. Even scriptural passages that I've read many times before can take on different meaning, or I'm taken more deeply into the revelation there. This morning, it was Psalm 12. For some reason, I'd read it before and had circled it as helpful. This time, there was just a single phrase in the middle of it that pulled me in and held me there. It was in verse 5:
"Because of the oppression of the afflicted and the groaning of the poor, I will now rise up," says the Lord. "I will put in a safe place the one who longs for it."
I've longed for that place. I've felt the safety of that place. I've been overwhelmed by the glory of that place, where I know I'm free, no matter what circumstances I'm in, or what's going on in the worldly dimension. The safe place is a state of mind and soul, and not necessarily the body. Can anything be more reassuring than feeling you're completely safe no matter what may happen, even in an instant, to your physical body?!
Frequently these days, when I see or hear of someone in a life or death situation, I realize how much my perspective has flipped. In the past, if I'd contemplated having a gun to my head, I'd be in panic mode. The natural fear of death, or of leaving this life, was almost more than I could bear to even think about. Now, knowing God and His ways as I do, such scenarios hold no fear whatsoever. If I live, if I die, the outcome is the same. I'm still in the hand of my Father! I doubt I'd say it out loud in such a scenario, but in my head I'd be thinking, "Go ahead and do what you'll do. I'm good." There isn't one scintilla of doubt in my mind that death is nothing more than an instant away from bliss.
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