I get that question alot.  I’ll answer candidly:  No.  I don’t feel safe.  There are drug dealers, sex offenders, prostitutes, and homeless folks walking past our house on a sometimes hourly basis.  I rarely am at home without our security system on.  We never leave anything of value in our cars.  If a strange person is walking past our house when it’s time to get out of the car, I wait till they are gone or I drive around the block.  I’m always suspicious of people who are hanging out on the corners at  strange hours.  I never stay home alone overnight and I sleep on the couch if Jay comes home late.  When I go upstairs during the day I always close the big door with the deadbolt lock. I sleep with a knife, mace and my phone next to my bed – just in case.   When I cut the grass I make sure my back is never to the alley, so people can’t sneak up on me.

Obviously, I don’t feel safe. I wouldn’t take all these extra precautions if I did.  However, no where do I see in scripture that ‘feeling safe’ is a prerequisite for serving God.  If that was the case, I’d never get out of bed.  Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s being afraid and doing it anyway.  If God has called you, then the safest place you can be is in His will.  His will is always right and good.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” – Describing Aslan in C.S Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia

Lindsay Eubanks is a longtime member of Sojourn, a wife, mother and Occupational Therapist. Lindsay and her husband live in the Shelby Park neighborhood in Louisville where they are trying to learn to be better neighbors and love God more.