"My Strong Tower"

I trust in the Lord in spite of the things I don’t understand about Him—because of the things I do understand about Him. And one of those things is that He looks at the heart of a matter and not just external appearances. Every one of us knows what it’s like to be in a situation that looks really, really bad, but onlookers are unaware of a few facts that would unfurl their eyebrows if they knew. What about the poor guy who walks into church on Sunday morning filthy because he stopped to help someone on the way who had a flat tire?...God knows all that stuff. But mortals jump to conclusions...Therefore, as we learn in today’s chapter, God invented the cities of refuge, because there are extenuating circumstances in life. There were six cities of refuge scattered throughout Israel (for your convenience), and each was a place you could run to if you had killed a person accidentally, without malice aforethought. You didn’t get off scot-free because you still were forced to leave everyone and everything you knew and to go to a strange city and hang around there until the high priest died. But it was better than vigilante justice on the streets of Debir or Medeba. God once gave King David a choice of punishments: famine, fleeing from his foes, or pestilence. David didn’t miss a beat: “Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man” (2 Samuel 24:14).Today, of course, the cities of refuge are all done away with, superseded by the refuge that is in Christ: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).

Andree Seu