Where's Your Refuge?

     A six-foot-long alligator growled and flashed his teeth at Duane and me from a pond on an Island off the coast of Alabama recently. If he’d attacked, I’d have scrambled up a tree, which is what this magnificent oak tree is known for. Locals call it the Goat Tree, because in the island’s past, wild goats scrambled into it to take shelter from roaming alligators.     
     Don’t we all face “alligators” at one time or another? Health issues that sneak up on us. Bosses that growl at us. Money problems that threaten to bite us. None of us are immune from problems. So where do we run to?     
     I may be going out on a limb with what I’m about to say, but trust me, it’s as sturdy as an oak. We know this world isn’t what it ought to be (racism, pandemics, the IRS). And we know we’re made for much more than we experience. I’ve come to believe that this deep yearning is the voice of our creator beckoning us for something more. He’s in the process of taking all the brokenness and remaking it - and us - for a better world. In the meantime (and it can get pretty mean), if you can’t picture yourself scampering up a tree for shelter, then visualize running to a rock as Whitney Houston sang here.     
​     Whatever alligators are nipping at your heels, I invite you to take refuge.