Seasons with such a degree of difficulty are quite rare to appear; while the first half of the 20th Century was very rich in crisis, the second part was very different. In the first 50 years of the 20th Century we had 2 World Wars, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression and the beginning of the cold war, which created the conflicts that we saw in the second part of the century. What we have learnt from History is that with every major crisis we find two elements: risk or danger, and opportunities. Every crisis brings danger, but in every crisis we can also find opportunities. Especially, opportunities for significant and relevant change.
When you consider the Biblical narrative one of the common points that you find before life changing events take place is that God seems to keep the people involved in the story in some form of sheltering. God takes them away from their daily, normal, common circumstances and into a season where elements like solitude, isolation, contemplation take central stage. It’s almost like if God didn’t use the circumstances they wouldn’t have had the chance to consider the necessary changes in their lives. Some of those circumstances were quite negative, but even then God found a way to work them out for their good. Would you like to consider some of those stories with me?
Noah and his family saw one of the most radical changes ever in history! His family was sheltered in the ark for a whole year before they were able to come down from the ark and restart humanity. Talk about social isolation: a whole year with your family and… pets! After the shelter Noah found a chance for a fresh beginning.
Jacob was having a very complicated upbringing and ended up in need of sheltering from his own brother, Esau. He found that shelter with his relative Laban in a new land, and after about 20 years he went home a transformed man, with family, possessions and a new walk… a new name: Israel. He found in that season his new and true identity.
Joseph was in the way to spent a life as a rejected brother in slavery, but God used that season to transform him and through all the pain that Joseph faced for about 17 years he became a new man that was ready to experience greatness- from a spoiled brat to a servant leader and from a rejected brother to the saviour of his family. Joseph found in the sheltering, and in the hardest of circumstances, the inspiration to have a new character.
Moses spent 40 years in the sheltering of the mountains and the desert, leading his sheep and raising a family, to be able to leave the palaces of comfort in his heart and embrace his destiny to be a prophet, a warrior, a leader that would change the world. Where others would have found only bitterness or despair, Moses found new destiny.
Naomi and Ruth were on very dire circumstances and close to surrender to bitterness, but instead they went on to take centre stage in the love story of Boaz and Ruth, the kind of story that changes the world, born against all odds and more powerful than Romeo and Juliet! Out of the sheltering in a foreign land they came back to find new love.
David was anointed to be king when he was a teenager, around 17 years-old. But he only became King when he was 30 and about 10 years of that time was spent living in caves at the desert or serving his enemies just to survive. When he came to take his place as the King he had a heart shaped after God’s own heart, and we carry today not just with his story but with the greatest hymn book of all times, the Psalms. His words are not just poetic, but are filled with the reality of pain, rejection, hope and passion that are born of the sheltering of God during the hardest days of your life.
Elijah was a powerful prophet that went through very difficult times when he felt alone, broken, misunderstood… it looked like he was the only one fighting the good fight. God led them to another cave near a brook and then he was sheltered and fed by God, and went on to anoint two kings and another prophet that will literally take the mantle from him… well, that’s exactly where we got the expression from! In the shelter he found courage to go ahead and reshape the future of nations.
Jonah was a prophet that was reluctant to share a message of repentance with a people that he felt didn’t deserve a chance to change. They were cruel with Israel, especially with prophets, and God told him to share his love with them! He ran away and ended up experiencing the strangest of shelters… inside a fish for three days! But there he found compassion, understanding, vision… and off he went to preach and got to know the depth of God’s love, the reaches out even to people like the Ninivites…
Daniel was just a teenager when he was taken to Babylon… but can we be sheltered living in a culture that is contrary to God’s culture that invites you to forget everything that is good and to surrender to everything that your God stands against? Yes, he wasn’t just sheltered but in Babylon he was put in places of influence that blessed his people and there he received visions about the future of the world and the coming of the Messiah.
The disciples were sheltered for 10 days between the time that Jesus ascended to heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost. They were afraid of the persecution but remained together in the upper room worshiping, praying and waiting… and when Pentecost arrived they rose to preach the gospel and saw the beginning of the church in the power of the Spirit. They came out of the shelter ready to give their lives for the gospel!
Paul was sheltered in Antioch for three years after his conversion. There was no place for him in Jerusalem but God send Barnabas to take him under his wing. There he was loved, welcomed, invited to use his gifts in the Kingdom and the church in Antioch was an amazing demonstration of God’s power and grace; there they were called Christians for the first time and from there Paul travelled to spread the gospel around the world. And at the end of his life he was sheltered in Rome under home detention where he wrote several of his epistles that we have today as sacred scripture! The words from the shelter are daily bread today.
John was sheltered in Patmos where he received the greatest prophetic message of all time, the book of Revelations. Caesar thought he was silencing the disciple of Jesus, but his voice is still heard today and will be fulfilled in eternity!
Finally, Jesus was sheltered for 18 years in Nazareth. He heard of him at 12 being presented at the temple and then when he was 30 starting his public ministry. During those 18 years his revelation of God grew and grew, and he came out of the shelter ready to change eternity, bringing the perfect revelation of the heart of the Father and preparing the seeds of the movement that reached us and made us part of the body of Christ, the church.
So if you find yourself tired of the sheltering, looking forward to life going back to normal, remember this: we are not supposed to go back to normal! We are supposed to come out of this shelter changed. Changed in seeing new chances, dressed in a new identity, having learnt new lessons, ready to embrace destiny, willing to experience a deeper love, embracing our new heart, with renewed courage and vision, speaking into the life of the community with God given authority, empowered by the Holy Spirit, proclaiming the words of life that change the eternal destiny of people, living out God’s love wherever we go, prepared for the future and knowing that we are eternally loved by God… well, maybe if we see some of those changes in our life will be enough! But this is my point: don’t hurry up because the greatest danger we have is to snap back into our past without learning anything new… and that would be a wasted opportunity. Let’s embrace the sheltering of God until he calls us out- something new is coming our way! Grace and peace to each one of you!