“He who dwelleth in the secret place ..”

When we awake any morning, we don’t know what the day will bring. Today it meant the US and Israel had made preemptive strikes against the Iranian regime.

I have a friend from Iran whose family fled as refugees. She tells horror stories and prays for a new day for her homeland.

I’ve taken nine trips to Israel over  the last 42 years. (I describe those trips in my book, A Traveling Grandma’s Guide to Israel: Adventures, Wit, and Wisdom.) Two trips turned out to be times when Israel came under attack. Those taught me valuable lessons about safe rooms and bomb shelters. Israeli law requires that new building structures include reinforced safe rooms where people can to go to survive.

On one trip, my team and I landed in Israel two hours after the 2012 Gaza War broke out. During our daytime travels or nighttime sleeping arrangements, we stayed aware of how far we were from our nearest safe room. I got up early each morning to join our hostess hearing radio news from Israel’s Defense Forces to see which bombing and combat targets were expected that day. The broadcaster would say, “If you are four miles from today’s target area and hear sirens, you have sixty seconds to get to your safe room. If you are two miles away, you have thirty seconds. One mile gives you 15 seconds. If you are closer than that, STAY in your safe room.”

We stayed alert and aware of how long it would take us to scramble to a safe room at any given moment.

But that information has a spiritual application. The Lord impressed me that He is our safe room.

The photo is of the safe room/bomb shelter at Kalia Kibbutz where I love to stay near Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

Psalm 91 says it best. ¹“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. ² I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.”

It’s crucial to know where to go in times of attack. It’s more important to know where and how to abide day and night, in good times and bad, in the One who is Safety.