Each week, someone from the meeting offers a "First Word." The speaker takes 3-5 minutes to reflect on his or her spiritual journey. Please email us your comments and questions!

LaVeta Sherman gave this First Word on November 27, 2005

Safety & Security

First Word Files / Archive / WHF

I have been thinking about the issue I'm going to talk about today for a number of years. The issue is "safety and security". I started pondering it when I was in the early stages of healing from my childhood abuse issues and have continued pondering it since the events of Sept 11 to the present. I would like to share some of my thoughts with you.

Americans are fixated on the issue of safety and security. We put sophisticated locks and alarms on our cars. Locks, alarms and even bars on our homes. We gate entire communities. We take martial arts lessons, carry mace, knives and guns, and use animals for personal protection. We purchase medical insurance, life insurance, invest in the stock market, IRAs, real estate and hope for Social Security to stick around. We rely on superior technology and our army, navy, air force, marines and national guarsmen for national security.

But safety and security, AS I WAS TAUGHT IT, do not exist.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire, earthquakes, tsunamis hit...and our well-protected cars, homes and jobs vanish. Children and adults continue to be abused, robbed and killed. We still get sick and die. Our loved ones fritter away the inheritance we leave and are still destitute. The stock market crashes or Enron scandals leave our retirement at risk. Foreigners fly planes into our buildings and 1000 people are dead. Our own people blow up buildings, like in Oklahoma City, and hundreds are killed and injured. Pain, heartache and sadness abound.

Safety and security, as I was taught it, do not exist.

This is the first Sunday in Advent and I have been thinking about Jesus coming as a baby, young child, teen and young adult. When Jesus was a small child, the political leader wanted him killed. So soldiers came and killed all the young boys around Jesus' age to insure that they got him. Mary and Joseph took Jesus and fled to another country where he wouldn't be killed. But what about the many parents who wept and grieved because their sons were killed.

Years later, Jesus was falsely accused, convicted and executed by the religious and political leaders because he spoke things they didn't want to hear.

Safety and security, AS I WAS TAUGHT IT, do not exist.

But...SAFETY and SECURITY are REAL.

When I read of Jesus facing his accusers and soon-to-be executors, I see, hear and feel Safety and Security. It was internal and it was manifested in peace, confidence, strength and love.

The Apostle Paul wrote that he, himself, had experienced hunger, cold, lack of needed things. He experienced natural disasters such as storms and shipwrecks. He had been beaten and imprisoned for speaking things that leaders didn't want to hear.

He also wrote the following:

"For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor the present situation or any future situation, nor height, nor depth, nor anyone or anything...NOTHING can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Knowing this and having it settled deep in our core is the essence of safety and security.