Security

You never know. You just never know.

It began like any other week day. Your family gets up, each at their own time and own pace. You eat breakfast, get ready for work or school, you talk about your schedule to make sure your kids aren’t stranded at school without a ride home, or your wife isn’t waiting at the restaurant to meet you for dinner, and you completely forgot. It is like any other day.

Your daughter gives you a peck on the cheek and says goodbye as she leaves for school with her backpack over her shoulder, her tennis racquet in one hand, and her cell phone in the other. The classic look for a high school freshman. It is such a familiar scene, it barely registers with you.

As you back out of your driveway and head down the street on your way to work, you can’t help but notice the beauty of your neighborhood. It is full of trees displaying the glory of their fall colors. The houses all seem peaceful. One neighbor is taking his garbage can out the street and waves. You return their wave and think, “It is so great to live here in the suburbs. It is safe, serene, secure.”

Why would you think that in only a few hours that would all be blown to pieces? How could anyone imagine that when you returned home that night from work, you would find the girl you kissed goodbye on her way out the door that morning, layng in a pool of blood in your home, apparently stabbed to death when she interrupted an intruder? How horrible? How unimaginable? What a nightmare!

But that is exactly what happened to the mother of Kelli O’Laughlin. She drove down the safe, serene, secure streets of Indian Head Park last Thursday after work and entered into a living nightmare. Like many of you, I can’t even begin to imagine what that would be like. Periodically I find myself fighting back tears when I think about it, even though I didn’t know the people personally.

This is the kind of thing we expect to avoid by living in the suburbs of Chicago. Our villages aren’t like the city. They are safe, secure and serene.

Our lives are surrounded by things that are supposed to provide security. Security cameras, security gates, security guards, and security codes. Passwords provide security for our electronic devices. Banks and investment companies provide security for our money. Cars have seat belts and air bags to make us secure from injury. OSHA agencies secure the work place so people aren’t endangered. When we travel on airplanes we go through security scanners as does our luggage.

There are all sorts of precautions taken in our lives that are supposed to provide security and protect us.

And yet, suicide bombers get on planes. Hackers get into our online bank accounts. Our identities are stolen. Accidents occur in the work place. Seat belts and air bags fail. Our safe, secure and serene suburbs are disrupted by crime and violence.  

Ultimately nothing can really protect us, keep us secure, or guarantee safety.

So, I fall back on an old document. One that was written more than 400 hundred years ago as a way to summarize what “reformed” Christians believe; the Heidelberg Catechism.

Question 1: “What is your only comfort, in life and death?”

Answer: “That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

“...that he protects me so well...” obviously does not mean that nothing bad will happen to me/us in life. It means that when the evils of life are at work, God knows and ultimately protects me.

If my seatbelt or airbag fails to protect me; if I am a victim of a violent crime; if I am attacked by a deadly disease, I am assured of the fact that I am in God’s hands and I will graduate to eternal life with Him.

We never know. We just never know. But God always knows.

Rev.