Finding Your Safe Place (Friday Devotional)

“Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

Psalm 32:6-7

In every classroom of the child development center where Lindsey teaches, there is a designated area in the corner of the room called the “safe place.” Whenever a child starts feeling overwhelmed, angry, or otherwise upset, they have the option of removing themselves from whatever situation is distressing them and going to the safe place for some time by themselves. Whether they close their eyes, read a book, or just sit, the safe place is a refuge from their anxieties, an area where no other child is allowed to bother them and where they can stay until they’re calm enough to leave.

The adult world offers a few space places like that—the lake house, beach resort, and deer blind all offer varying degrees of relaxation and escape from ‘real life.’ But even those temporary getaways, handy as they are for physically removing you from the worries of daily life, cannot protect you from your own stress, doubts, and fears. Even when you try to leave life’s struggles behind, they have a way of keeping you up at night.

Where you can truly find security in your time of distress is in prayer. Too often the first approach to the problems that plague you is to apply your own slapdash solutions without ever bringing those concerns to God first. Too busy or too rushed to pray, you take the problems into your own hands—and then wonder why things aren’t getting any better and why you are constantly worrying.

In prayer, God has provided a hiding place for you, a refuge from the storms of life. When you trust God with your concerns, when you seek His will instead of trying to bend life to yours, He grants you a peace that even the circumstances themselves cannot overpower. While there is no promise that your problems will magically disappear, seeking God in prayer ensures that those problems will not overcome you. So may you find your security today not in the temporary respite of escape or the limited grasp of your own solutions, but in the enduring power of prayer.