Feeling safe?

As I have returned from annual leave and the safety of a household of isolation, where there is no external contact to being in infection, I have arrived home feeling somewhat unsafe. I walked Poppy yesterday with a mask on, and was very deliberate in avoiding other people. I find myself getting irritated with those who come too close and don’t appear to realise they are doing so, as if there was no global pandemic and rising infection rates and death toll!!
This has made me all the more aware of where my safe place is. Here at home I am safe. No-one comes in, I can regulate what does come in and can isolate parcels or foodstuffs for a period before touching them. I can make myself safe here, and am in control of what and who has access to me, or so I feel. As I’ve realised this and am learning to live with a sense of fearful insecurity when out and about, I am remembering that it is, in fact and only, in Jesus, that we are safest. Safest eternally, safest from all things, safest in every way. I am reminded that it is only in Jesus that I am truly safe and it is to him, not my physical home, that I must run and learn to dwell.
As I’ve remembered, I am reminded that the shepherds just up and left their flocks to get to the baby Jesus in Luke 2. They had a sense of urgency and ran to see Jesus. Who do you run to and what do you run from? Where is your safety found?

Walter Wangerin, in his Advent Meditation book ‘Preparing for Jesus’, writes:
“We are the ones who run this year, too, as in every year past:
From toil and our daily chores, we run to the comfort in Bethlehem.
From our obligations and responsibilities, we run to the strength of Immanuel: God’s strong arm among us.
From our fears of loss and instability, from the anguish of troubled finances, from poverty we run to the treasure that will not tarnish nor ever diminish, the baby’s eyes like coins in our purse, the baby’s eyes eternal.
From our obscurity; from the darkness in which we live our lives, unacknowledged, inglorious; from our truer condition as “no one, people that are not” we run to the Son of God, who knows each of our names, and who will call us by our names, and whose very call will empower us to follow.

From sorrow we run to joy.
From hatreds we run to love.
From antagonisms we run to peace.
From sickness we run to the healer.
From sin we run to the Savior.
From death we run to life.

O child, we kneel before you. We have no gifts, neither the gold of riches nor the frankincense of holy aroma, nor the myrrh of salve and embalmment. We must ourselves be the gifts we bring to you. Jesus, we offer our bodies as living sacrifices; let them be holy and acceptable to you.”

Wangerin Jr., Walter. Preparing for Jesus (pp. 134-135). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.