What the Psalms Have Taught Me About Safety

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In the summer of 2008, I spent two months in Pakistan. My time was focused on discipleship, through training teachers at a local Christian girls’ school in English and leading Bible studies among nurses at a local hospital, primarily. When I first arrived on a muggy Sunday morning and was retrieved by the airport by a Pakistani driver via a sign that read “Bethany Simpson,” I watched in fascination out the window from the back seat of the car for the 2+ hour drive at the new world in which I found myself. A few hours after arriving at my new home, after a short nap and changing into a shalwar kameez, I accompanied my hosts to a local wedding reception. Upon arrival, we saw a group of men celebrating by shooting guns straight up into the air, and my hosts explained that this was a cultural celebratory tradition, regretfully sharing about the unfortunate deaths that occur from falling bullets.

I lay in bed that night, and listened to gunshots in the distance, and fear seized my heart. I could die here in this place, of all things, from celebratory falling bullets. Oh God, I prayed, I’m so afraid of falling bullets, of all things, in this place. I drifted into a fitful sleep, and awoke to the call to prayer at dawn, realizing God’s protection of me and his sovereignty over my life. In that first week, and the weeks following, the Lord worked in my heart to show me anew of his sovereignty over the events of my life. On June 21, 2008, I wrote in my journal, “I think fear hit its peak for me last week when I realized that it is possible that I won’t see Ben or my family again…this is a very real consideration, but not one to dwell upon. And then I felt a quiet confidence…that I will indeed see them again. If nothing else, most surely in your presence. But I pray that I will be able to return home.” And a couple of months later, by God’s grace and according to his perfect will, I did.

One of the most frequent questions we got about our plans to move to South Africa was regarding our safety, asked out of a place of love and concern for the wellbeing of our family. We typically answered it something like this: Yes, there are real dangers in South Africa. There is a high crime rate. There is HIV. There are many deaths each year from car accidents. But there are dangers in the United States too; different dangers, no doubt, but danger the same. Ultimately, we entrust our lives and the lives our daughters to the Lord, and believe that He is sovereign over our lives.

So, while many of you have likely heard that response, I wanted to take a few minutes to unpack that a bit further here, and share what the Psalms in particular have taught me about safety. Understanding God’s sovereignty over our lives and deaths is applicable not only to cross cultural workers, but after all, to anyone who belongs to Christ.

To begin, we first must recognize that God as our Creator has both given us life and determined the length of our days:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb… my frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Psalm 139:14a, 15-16

In his sovereignty, God has both given us this life and determined the number of days we would live on earth. He already knows the day of your death; it will not come as a surprise to him. If your life is rooted in the salvation of God through Christ, you have the great blessing of knowing that you are secure in Christ in both your life and your death! We are able to trust him with both. It is not for me to worry over my safety, or the safety of my husband, or my children, because his love for them is far superior to mine and he sovereignly cares for them.

Secondly, we can entrust our safety to God because he has promised to be our protector. Psalm 91 says:

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday”

Ps. 91:1-6

Here we can understand several key points. God is the only one who can deliver us; all other illusions of safety are simply that, illusions. He has promised to be our shield, our refuge, our fortress; truly, only he can protect us against the many dangers of this world. One of my favorite passages is found in Psalm 3: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head… I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me” (v. 3, 5). I literally cannot find peace from the danger of this world in any other secure place than in the Lord – who sustains me, day in and day out.

Not only can we learn about God’s promised protection, we can also see how the psalmist demonstrates the active placing of his life under the care of the Lord. He “dwells in the shelter of the Most High” and says to the Lord, “my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust” (v. 1,2). This psalm continues on, “you will not fear…because you have made the Lord your dwelling place” (v. 5, 9). There is action on the part of the psalmist, a cognitive step of choosing to put his trust for his life into God’s hands; of rejecting fear, because he is dwelling in the Lord. We can trust God with our safety, in the night, by day, in the darkness, in the noonday sun. At all times, through all our days, he is trustworthy.

Finally, we see that only in Christ is true safety found:

“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

Ps. 91:14-16

Here the psalmist is expressing God’s words of salvation, which we now understand has been revealed in Christ, who is our ultimate deliverer and in whomGod will protect him who “knows my name,” here on earth, and in ultimate eternity. For those of us who have trusted in Christ for our salvation, our eternity is secure, and this is our ultimate safety. All kinds of dangers may fly around us, may threaten our earthly lives, but because of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, we are forever secure in him. What glory! What peace!

And so, we can confidently and wisely entrust the safety of our family in South Africa to our loving Father. This does not mean that we will be unwise in the daily things; we will still buckle our children into car seats, we will still be cautious in going out at night, and we will still take extra precautions on the road. But this does mean that though we seek to be wise in these daily things, we realize they do not promise safety, but God promises his love to us and his best for us.

It is also important to understand that by entrusting the Lord with our safety, we are not guaranteed long lives; in fact, in his sovereignty, he may see fit to end my earthly life sooner. This is not a failure on his part to “keep me safe,” but rather a part of his good plan, according to his ultimate purpose, one we may not understand on this side of eternity.

But whether our years are twenty or ninety, there is wisdom in acknowledging the shortness of our lives:

“O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreaths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!”

Psalm 39:4-5

In obedience to God, we can truly rest in his sovereignty over all the days of life and the day of our death. And then, we are able to pray in earnest with the psalmist, “so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” and “let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90).

Yes, Lord, establish the work of our hands!

for a beautiful musical rendition of Psalm 4, listen here, by the Psalms Project

originally published on Feb. 24, 2017

When Home is not Homey

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After a long, 42-hour trip with my two youngest, after yet another delay Stateside (this time we can all blame the same thing, no?), after grappling with the grief of leaving yet again, I climbed out of the car, and stepped through the door into my home – to find it smelled, felt more cramped than I remember, and distinctly did not feel like my home. Wait, my mind stalled right there at the door, is this really my home?

This was definitely not the feeling I was anticipating; usually, after a long (or even short) trip anywhere, I love the satisfying feeling of returning to my space, to resettling with my people in our own nook in the world, to the peace and joy and content that comes from just being a place of our own, together.

I suppose, in that moment, there were a couple of possible reactions to my disappointed arrival home: I could conjure all the homey feelings I know deep inside somewhere, and “put on a happy face” until I make it. I could go crawl in a corner and sit in my mournful melancholy for awhile (my reaction of choice had I not four eager children). Or, and what I did, I could unpack all the bags I had brought in a mad rush and attempt to quell the mental storm with the restoring of some small sense of order. Control what I can control, anyone else? Cleaning and organizing always seem to help regulate whatever emotional rush I am currently battling. In the following days, I tackled the deeper cleaning, the washing of all the things, and the random decluttering, and within a week, this house began to feel again like the home I had been anticipating settling back into. I saw with fresh eyes the beauty throughout, the peace and goodness we seek to cultivate within its walls, the potential for love to reign here, in the midst of grief and evil and suffering.

While there are a lot of elements that played into the overall disappointment of that particular arrival home (namely, the use and abuse of our home by others while we were gone), the concept of home has always been a complicated one, particularly for those of us who live outside our passport countries. For Ben and I, we have lived in six homes, in three different countries, over the course of our marriage, and we now can say, after five and a half years, this is the home in which we have lived the longest. There is the struggle that none of these homes we have owned, unlike most of our peers at our age and stage of life.

Even in all of that moving and resettling and renting and non-owning, each of those homes, in their own seasons, have been havens of rest, shelters for us from the raging of the world, and spaces we could open and into which we could bring others. Each new home has called me into a deeper sense of how? can this work for us, for our family, how? can this be a space where love reigns, peace is pursued, and goodness and beauty abound, and how? can we use this to share the love and peace and goodness and beauty of God with others? That challenge – of bringing forth in a space its best utility, and natural beauty, and cultivated peace – has been one for which I have gratefully accepted the transitions.

And for those seasons where I feel rootless, when home does not feel homey, when I wonder when it will be our turn to own, truly own, our unique piece of land in this wide world, I am leaning into the age-old promise that our true home is not found on this earth. That all of this good work of creating homes this side of heaven is a reflection of the Creator who has a home waiting for us – one filled with beauty beyond measure, filled with perfect peace and unending goodness.

In the meantime, you may find me cleaning again, or organizing something. Making our little house a home all over again, thanks to the goodness of God, until someday, we will be truly, forever, home.

Hello from 2022

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Hello reader friends. It’s been several months, not that I expected for it to be. But sometimes life happens with such speed and force, that we are wise to pause other endeavors and lean into it, no?

For a personal update, we wrapped up our homeschool and college school years in November, and headed back to the States for the holiday season. It was a trip of stress and difficulty, and also of meaningful time together and grief and gratitude. Half of our family tested C*vid positive, and could not return when planned. But now, at the end of the first month of 2022, we are home in South Africa and all together again. We are grateful for the opportunity and privilege to be with our families this year, and grateful to be back and settling into our normal routines and rhythms.

A new year always offers a certain energy and clarity for me; what is this year going to bring? What goals might I set? What will we do as a family? This new year, I am entering with a sense of timidity. It’s difficult to put words to our last year; still pain a bit fresh, and grief very real. Still sore from loss, sore from life. Certainly this year must be better than last year, whatever that means. Right, God?

But who are we to bargain with God? I do not know what this year holds any more than we knew what last year would hold. And perhaps it was a gift that we did not know. It’s a gift that we do not know. Rather, we entrust this year to God, we entrust our loved ones, our families and marriages and churches and ministries and work all to God, and we seek to be faithful in this day.

So here I am, on this side of 2021, easing into 2022 with a face toward faithfulness, finding God gently nudging me toward fresh goals, fresh hope, fresh movement. Asking him for wisdom, for direction, for faith, for encouragement. And trusting that he will be with us, whatever 2022 might hold.

Peace to you today, friends, wherever you find yourselves.

The Beauty of Lament

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The slanting rain pounds the window incessantly; it’s been one of those days, where it rains the whole day. We awake to rain, we school to rain, we share dinner to rain, we head to bed to rain. The rain is good, so needed after our long, dry winter here in South Africa. It cleanses the air, it waters the soil and life within, it washes the dirt and dust away. It also reflects my heart today.

Since the passing of my nephew four months ago, I have spent a lot of time processing my pain in prayer. In the earliest days, when the prayers were more like moans, all I could offer was oh God, oh God, oh God, tears mingled with desperate cries of help them, help us.

On the very long, lonely trip back to the US, I copied Psalms into my journal, having no words or emotional capacity to form prayers of my own. A liturgy sent to my by a friend from the new Every Moment Holy Vol. 2 became my prayer for the next weeks:

Be nearer, O Christ, than I have ever known… comfort us, O God, in these hard and early hours of loss. Be to us a strength and light, for we are shocked, numbed as children spilled into cold seas… how can I make sense of this? Make peace with this? Have words for this? Though I scarce have words to pray, O Spirit of God, still let my tears, my groans, and my wounded silences rise as an incense of perpetual prayer, reminding you of my need… carry me. Carry all of us who grieve…

The last few months have found me awakening in the mornings to the Psalms, for a long while Psalm 77 in particular. I have noticed in a fresh way the honesty of these psalmists – the crying out to God, the questioning and deep doubts, the remembering of God’s faithfulness, the turning toward hope again. And this structure, commonly seen in laments throughout Scripture, has given me a way to pray through my own pain.

Crying out to God // In pain, the natural temptation is to turn inward: no one understands me or I’m so alone or everyone has moved on. It is an act of courage, then, to take the first step of turning to God and acknowledging his presence, which alone can conjure more pain. God is here, and yet this happened? In Psalm 77:3, the psalmist says, “when I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints.” It is not easy to acknowledge God in the midst of our suffering and grief, because in his omnipotence, he did not prevent this painful circumstance. And yet, we also realize in his omnipresence that we have never been, and truly never are, alone. He has been with us through the whole of our pain. It is courageous to turn to God in the midst of pain.

Voicing of complaints // Once we have turned our attention toward God, the pattern we see in Scripture is a vocalizing of questions, of complaints to him. We do not need to jump straight to hope, but rather honestly pour out our hearts to him. All of those disappointments, all of those questions, all of that pain – he is aware of it already, but like a knowing parent who waits patiently for his child to come to him, intimacy builds through honesty. “Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time?” the psalmist writes in 77:8. Well, that’s not very biblical, you might be thinking. And yet, biblical laments model for us a holy complaining, a pouring out of our hearts to our Father who wants us to.

Remembering God’s faithfulness // Once we have poured out our hearts to God, we recall how he has been with us throughout our lives, through the joys and pain of the past. Has he failed in his promises to me? Some laments at this point frame a request to God; Psalm 77 turns to remembering: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord, yes I will remember your wonders of old” (77:11). It may be that the goodness of God is obscured at this present moment, but I can recall his faithfulness in the past. Never once has his love failed; never once has he left me. Rather, he has been a shield for me and the lifter of my head (Ps. 3), my refuge and my strength (Ps. 9 and 18), my rock and my fortress and my deliverer (Ps. 18), the strength of my life and a very present help in trouble (Ps. 27 and 46), the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Ps. 73). This is what I know to be true of God.

Turning toward hope // This intimate honesty and remembering leads my heart to be renewed in hope. Through the tears, through the pounding rain, the relentless pain, my eyes again can look up to Jesus in deep hope and anticipation for his restoring work in my life and in the world. Recalling Israel’s exodus and Red Sea crossing, our psalmist declares, “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock…” Even when God’s way seems hidden to us, we trust his hand is guiding us, as he was guiding his people then, and has for all time. We turn our eyes again to the light, and we wait in hope, for him to make all things new, as he has promised someday.

The rain is still pouring down, my heart is still heavy. And so I will turn again to God, and in so doing, reject the narratives of my aloneness or the uniqueness of my suffering. Instead, I will join with the saints of old, the writers of Scripture, who have modeled to us how to pray through our pain. Give us courage, Father, to turn to you again today.

++ a book I found helpful on this topic is Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop.

On Shadows and Home

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The situation in Afghanistan has been heavy on my heart these weeks, for those who must stay and for those who must leave. For the uncertainty, the danger, the chaos. Perhaps it’s heavier for those of us who live outside of our “home” countries, for those of us who have experienced some level of uncertainty, of danger, of chaos. But then, we know these things can ensue anywhere, no matter your location. The shadows of this world are powerful.

A month ago, South Africa experienced the worst violence, the worst unrest, since the fall of apartheid in 1994. The bulk of it centered in our province, in which our city is central. At the height of it, Ben and I looked at each other, and realized that even if we felt like we should try to leave, how could we? Where could we go? Our highways were closed, all COVID testing centers were closed, most gas stations were closed. We had thrown our essentials into backpacks – you know, the documents, the charging cords, the single change of clothes for each of us, one stuffy per child. We looked around our house, our home of the past five years, and imagined the real possibility of just leaving everything if we must. It was disorienting, it was chaotic, it was awful. And we did not even need to leave in the end.

And even though we did not need to leave in the end, my mind and heart began the process of grieving our life of the past five years. I took photos of every single page in our family photo albums, knowing that an emergency evacuation would mean leaving those behind. Ben and I quietly decided which stuffed animal or doll each child would need most. We looked at our cat, our Turkish rugs from his parents, the quilts and guitar from mine. Of course, these are just material things, and yet they are the things that have made up our home. We thought of our friends here, our community here, the staff and students whom we love, this place that has become home to us. The fact of our citizenship and the privilege associated with it brought guilt; we could leave, but what about those who couldn’t? It was complicated. The idea of leaving it all, of leaving everything, was so overwhelming.

It was taste enough of the anxiety, grief, and trauma that can come with suddenly leaving your home, or suddenly losing your home, with the added complication of losing your country, your work, your community. We are still processing, a bit more fragile on this side of it, more compassionate toward those who live in the midst of this kind of uncertainty regularly, and deeply moved for those who have had to leave like this.

//

A few days ago, as I sat with my children during our daily morning time, we discussed this idea of home. One said, “South Africa is my home, this is where I have mostly grown up and where my cats are,” always the animal lover. Another child replied, “but I love America, that’s where I was born. I think that is where my home is.” I explained that the answer to that question is not even straightforward for me, even though I’ve spent most of my life in one country. We ultimately agreed that home is where our family is, that even the little farmhouse we occupied for a month during our home assignment felt like home while we stayed in it. “And,” I added, “I think there is a part of us that will never feel completely at home anywhere in this world. We will always feel a bit split between the people and things we love here, and the people and things we love in America, because neither of these is our true, forever home.”

Our true forever home. We sat a minute in that thought, the glorious idea that one day we will not have this longing for one place or another, that one day all things will be made new, that tears will be no more, that death will be no more. Some days, it’s hard to reach for the hope through the fog, isn’t it? We remember what Tolkien’s loyal and wise Sam Gamgee once said, “But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”

On some level, we all know the pain of loss and longing for home. Perhaps those of us who’ve lived in worlds unfamiliar feel it a bit more strongly, yet it’s part of our human experience. We all seek to make our place in this world, our house into a home, our acquaintances into friends, our own little communities of which to be a part. But to keep our hearts rooted and grounded in Christ, rather than in a particular place, is to be at peace wherever in this world we find ourselves.

And so today, I am opening my hands again to this life we have here, this community and this home. I am hugging my children close, snuggling under quilts and soaking up our calm, keenly aware that it is fleeting, and this is not all we have. I am asking God to give peace to those who find themselves in the shadows of the world. And as been my habit these years, I turn my face upward toward the light, to be reminded that even the darkness must pass.

This Is What I Know

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5

What is light without darkness?

—

“Look at the stars, Mom!” my daughter whispered loudly, as we walked outside near our house. I had returned from the US just a few weeks before, from what was the hardest, saddest trip I had ever made. We had lost our nephew tragically; months later, I still do not have words for the depth of collective pain both felt and witnessed in those weeks following, or for these current days.

I looked up, mirroring my daughter’s face. The stars were bright tonight, the winter air dry and crisp and cold, our breath coming out in little puffs. Cause out here in the dark, underneath a canopy of stars, constellations falling from your heart, promise me I’m not alone, cause I’m feeling so very alone… these words from Ellie Holcomb’s song had filled my ears on those long flights, echoing the silent screams in my head as I was suspended over an ocean between my grieving families.

“Yes, they’re so beautiful,” I murmured back, squeezing her hand. If it weren’t for the darkness, never would we witness the glory of these bright and burning balls throughout our galaxy. Would I rather there just not be the darkness? At that moment, yes. And yet he created them both. In the darkness, he gave glorious, beautiful, billions of bodies of light. Humans of all time have looked up in the night, just as we were now, and appreciated the miracle. Did God have to create stars, these sources of lovely light in our night sky? Do they exist only for his glory and our beauty?

We know now that stars are vital for the existence of life, particularly our largest star, the sun. Without it, all life on earth would be exposed to cosmic radiation; without photosynthesis, all plants, animals, and humans would die. Life could not be sustained on earth without stars. Even in the night, God is sustaining our very lives through the physical proximity of earth to the sun.

I held my daughter’s hand as we walked slowly home, both of us quiet, in our own thoughts. The stars are essential for the continued existence of our physical lives, and a source of beauty, comfort, and direction in the darkness of night. In him was life, and this life was the light of men…the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. As long as there has been darkness, longer has there been the true Light. Has the darkness not overcome us, though? Looking at the world some days, it is hard to say. Some days, the night is thick and the outline of the constellations is faint, but the stars are constant, existing no matter the obscurity between us and them. And every morning, the sun itself rises again as the earth turns. In the earliest breaking of the world, in the history of the breaking of the world, and in my current world breaking, light is overcoming darkness, both the literal physical darkness and the deep soul darkness. Jesus has been redeeming the world since its first breaking, and will not stop until the day when all is made new.

When I felt the light of the moon on my face, the memory of sun that been shining for days, you’ve already been in this desolate place, you’ve already been here, and You’ve made a way. Jesus has always been, but he has also physically walked this material dirt under our feet, breathed this air in our lungs, looked at our night sky with its glorious stars. He was with us, and he is with us. His light is breaking in, every day and every night, and in the hearts of those who look for him. This is what I know.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.