Only one safe place

In the small space of two weeks two of my daughters have faced scary situations. Both situations were crimes. One daughter was robbed at gun point as she covered the customer counter at Safeway. The other had just returned home with her school aged children when she surprised a man in her garage. He was standing in his boxers stuffing his laundry into her washer. He had managed to get into the garage and the back screened in porch where he had used a child’s table to take crack.

The police caught the man, put him in their police car but said they couldn’t take him in because he hadn’t stolen anything. This reminded all of us of how vulnerable we are when even our homes are not safe.

But there is a darker place, a place where many of us existed in years past. We may not have realized at the time how lonely and lost we were but the King of creation knew. He is that safe place that exists even in the darkest night.

In one of C.S. Lewis’s stories, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the passengers, including the children who have slipped into Narnia via a picture on a wall, have come to an island of nightmares. There is no safety at all. Everything turns into just another bad dream. And then Lucy, one of the children who had slipped into Narnia, cries out to Aslan the great lion who is a picture of Jesus. “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.”

And then Lewis writes this:

Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something on it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead bearing a little to starboard, Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her ‘Courage dear heart’ and the voice, she felt sure was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.”