If You're Looking for a Refuge

It's the last weeks of 2012 when I start to wonder if maybe two years can bear the same name.

Because the Year of Home is rushing right up to an end, and I feel it deep, how the living out of this one year's name--it's only just beginning.

Maybe I set out to make my home in Christ, but God, He's emptied me out instead, Christ making Himself at home in this one woman's soul.  And how could a single year ever be enough to really grab hold of this impossible truth?  That God's in me and I'm in Him and I'm no longer the broken woman without a home--I'm the Beloved who's always at home in the One True Lover of us all.

But I wonder if even a whole lifetime could teach me the depth of this one glorious Grace, and maybe what the new year really needs is this:  a new name that roots right into the old one, builds straight up from the year that's come before.

It's a morning in late December when that new name finds me.  I'm just sitting on the edge of the bed, reading through Psalm 27 for the hundredth (thousandth?) time.  This is the song of hope that's been my resting place for months.  And it's right there in the very first verse, that one phrase jumping clean off the page, planting itself in the soil of a soul that's been scraped bare:

The LORD is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear?  The LORD is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?  {Psalm 27:1 NIV}

Stronghold.

That one word might come with a whole heap of baggage, us always the ones trying to break free from the strongholds of fear and doubt and life-searing shame.  But aren't we really just trying to break into the Stronghold Who won't let us go?

Still, this word doesn't quite fit the year that's being born, and I think I see it for what it really is--a signpost saying, "Here!  Look here, Beloved!  Dig down with your own hands and find the treasure I've hidden for you!"

And that's exactly what I do.

I pull out The Amplified Bible first, let these added words flesh out the truth behind this one verse:

The LORD is my Light and my Salvation--whom shall I fear or dread?  The LORD is the Refuge and Stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?  {Psalm 27:1 AMP}

Refuge.

Yes!  That's it, Lord, isn't it?  The name You've chosen for 2013?

But I want to be sure and I look up the Hebrew that's been translated "stronghold" in the NIV and I find it there, too:  refuge, stronghold, fortress, place of protection.

And isn't that the kind of home I've wanted all along?  A refuge.  A place of protection.  A stronghold that can never be shaken or taken.

Yes.

The first day of 2013 slips in quiet and I christen the year with this one word:  Refuge.  I've no doubt that God's the One doing the naming and God's the One Who'll teach me what this year's really about.  But what I already hear Him whispering across all of my days?  It's enough to make this one heart leap clean out of the chest with joy and hope and relief.

"I'm your Refuge, Beloved.  I'm your Place of Protection.  You are home.  You are safe.  You are loved.  You are Mine."

So I throw my arms and my soul and my whole life wide open and I say it straight out:

Welcome, Year of Refuge.  Welcome.





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