“Lord, You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.”     Psalm 90:1

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ ”     Psalm 91:1-2

“For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”      Psalm 91:11

As I hung up the phone this morning with a dear friend battling stage four cancer, my heart just plain ole hurt.

It ached for her, for her family, and for others who are just beaten down with desperately ill kids, trauma-stricken family scenarios, and various ravages of the Evil One. Oh, this world is just plain ole broken. It’s overwhelming. Sometimes the words simply do not convey the unfathomable pain being endured. To spend countless days recovering from rounds and rounds of chemo. To watch marriages dissolve and kids’ hearts broken. To listen to the hearts of folks who have endured abuse. To see with our own eyes the ravages of the brokenness from the Fall.

Against such pain, we must come to grips with the fact that HE MUST BE ENOUGH! There’s nowhere else to run.  HE is our Dwelling Place. When I think about the words “dwelling place,” images of homes or dwellings come up. Large homes. Small homes. Condos. Trailers. Mansions. Tents. Cabins. The images all involve a place, not a Person; yet, God says that He IS the Dwelling Place. Dwellings gets messy; and dwellings hold the messy contents of the owners. The good. The bad. The stuff. The emotions. ALL the possessions of the owner.

So what would it be like tonight to allow our dwelling place to be a Person, rather than a place? For as long as civilizations have existed, we have banked our protection on the shelter of these places. These structures have protected us from raging fires, from torrenntial rains, from cataclismic storms! But…what if God has designed us to be protected by His fortress, His might, and His strength?

The painting above hangs directly in front of my bed. As I wake and as I drift off to sleep, I am reminded deeply of God’s sheer goodness. “For He will command His Angels concerning you to guard you in all of your ways.” That’s the verse given to this masterpiece by the gifted Linda James. God granted me the privilege of meeting her at the Seaside chapel years ago while visiting the beach with a friend. Linda’s artistic ministry is to create works of art that point others to Jesus. I met Linda while starting a journey a year before my health scares and one in which I was forced to look at how wounds from my childhood were still having such a stronghold on my life.  My heart longed to have one of her paintings as a sort of Ebeneezer to God’s faithfulness as well as His provisions over the last few years. For my 50th birthday, my sweet husband and boys surprised me with this particular one, “Angels’ Guard.”

Much of Linda’s work has angels camouflaged in various places as if they are difficult to see. Some paintings have three; some have seven; and some have twelve. One of her signature traits is the tiny lamb in the bottom right corner. The lamb is there to seemingly remind, “I will go to great lengths to pursue you, My child. You, little lamb, have great significance and great value. As My heart runs after the prodigal, the lost, so I will go after you.”

I have no answers for the unfathomable pain which seems to have forged a hedge around some homes right now in real space and  time; but, I do know without a shadow of doubt, that in Him, our dwelling cannot be shaken. Guarded by His angels, we must know that HE, the Great I Am, is enough. His name is REDEEMER; and He delights in redeeming those places which seem so dark and devastating. Let’s make Him our Dwelling Place even at this moment when the sun is setting.