Is it safe?

We're back in the States and over jet-lag. And we've experienced our first week of trying to condense a 10-month experience into a 30-second sound byte that your average listener will absorb as we try to process through what happened to us over there. Usually I don't get to share about the things that mattered to me; usually I answer people's questions about living in the Middle East.

The three questions that we've been asked the most are:

1. Did you have to cover up all the time? No.

2. What did you eat over there? Same things I eat here.

3. Is it safe? {Confusion and blank looks.}

It's the third question that is, for me, by far the most interesting. Not because I have an interesting answer, but because the question itself reveals a lot about the nature of humankind.

Anyone who would ask the question "Is it safe?" is basically asserting that there are places you can go in the world that are "safe" and places that you can go that aren't. They believe that if you go to Afghanistan, for instance, it isn't "safe," but if you stay in the American suburbs, it is. Maybe this belief is partially to blame on the sensationalist media, which only covers news stories of the Middle East that involve death and destruction. I mean, I don't think they would probably be asking that question if I had moved to Germany, or something. (Katie K, correct me if I'm wrong.)

But I think the main reason people believe there are "safe" places and "unsafe" places is because people are addicted to control, and they like to believe they have some sort of say over when they die, and how.

If there are "safe" and "unsafe" places, it means that you can put yourself in the driver's seat of your own life. Be captain of your own destiny. Choose a "safe" place, and you can wake up, drive to work, shop for groceries, take your kids to the park, go to church: All in the snug security of your "safe" world. You rest assured that you will grow old with your spouse, retire with a nice pension, and die peacefully one day in your sleep, probably at the age of 92.

This is a big, fat lie.

Unless you're committing suicide, you have absolutely no say whatsoever about how you die, or when.

Living in America does not make you immune to death and destruction. Cancer can find you when you're four years old. Another driver can blindside and kill you when you're 16. You can go for a hike in the Grand Canyon without a map and die of heat exhaustion at 25. I don't care where you live, you have absolutely no guarantee that you will see next week.

What do you mean, "Is it safe?" Haven't you noticed? This world isn't a safe place to be, if you're definition of "safe" is "free from the possibility of death."

...And maybe I shouldn't be writing this, but to be honest, the thing that bothered me most about the question "Is it safe?" is that it came from the mouths of people who claim to be believers in an all-powerful, sovereign God.

When you put God in the equation, you still have no control over when and how you die, but there is someone who does.

Now, let me be clear: God never promises that you won't die an early death under His watch. (Uh, Jesus did not die in His sleep at 92.) In the hands of God, "safety" doesn't mean freedom from death and destruction. It means that even death and destruction can't take you out of the hands of God.

But people who claim faith in a sovereign God still believe that if they just live in the suburbs, if they eat right and work out, if they don't smoke or drink, if they stick to low-risk sports, if they avoid those "unsafe" places on the other side of the world, they will not have to die before they choose. Maybe they won't say it like that, but the question "Is it safe?" betrays them. It is a hands-down denial of God's sovereignty.

Paul writes that while the words "peace and safety" are still on people's lips, destruction comes for them and catches them, the way a thief will steal from the man who flaunts his cash on the subway. They get cancer; they crash the car; they get lost in the desert. They die young. Or they die old. But they all die, one after the other, and not one of us can stop it when it comes for us.

I only hope that when death comes for me, in 60 years or tomorrow, I am safe in the hands of God.