Tuesday, April 8: A Safe Place To Land

Written by Ashley Oliver-Thomas, Chaplain Resident, UVA Medical Center, Charlottesville, VA

To feel safe is sacred.

I invite you to consider: what, who, or where makes you feel safest?

One place I feel safest is outside in nature. God’s Creation is so vast yet so intimate and personal. Being in the wilderness, literally, hiking up in the mountains or on a trail around my neighborhood, feels like home to me.

But being in the wilderness can also sometimes not feel so safe. The wilderness can make us feel weary, uncertain, powerless.

I am thankful Jesus journeys with us through wildernesses that feel safe to us and the ones that may feel more hostile.

In this song, there are two stanzas that speak to me most. The first are the ones that begin the song, sung by Sara Bareilles:

When holding your breath feels safer than breathing…

These words invite me to think about the reality of how sometimes, we find ourselves in spaces, or around certain people, who make us feel as though we can’t breathe; we feel we have to hold our breath in order to take up as little space as possible. Maybe we don’t feel we can be ourselves around those people or in those spaces, or maybe we are not encouraged to show up fully as ourselves, so we don’t.

Have you ever been in a literal or figurative wilderness and found yourself struggling to catch your breath?

I invite you to think about the ways Jesus validates and encourages us to breathe deeply; to slow down and breathe in the air and the smells around us.

The second stanza of lyrics that speak most to me in this song are these:

Imagine yourself in a building, up in flames and being told to stand still

I have found myself existing in spaces before where I have physically and emotionally felt so unwelcome, so unsafe, it made me shake. The feeling of being in a place you’re not wanted, or in a season in the wilderness that feels as though you’re surrounded by flames, is heavy and dark.

I invite you to think about a time, a place, or season where you felt as though everything around you was on fire, but you couldn’t escape.

How beautiful and holy to know Jesus is always there not just to pull us through the fiery wilderness, but he stands with us in it.

I want to leave you with lyrics that are repeated towards the end of the song:

Be the hand of a hopeful stranger

This Lenten season, may we each be the hand of a hopeful stranger; a safe place for someone to land. Make sure that you, too, find those safe places for yourself, where you are able to feel supported and loved unconditionally.

Above all, remember Jesus himself is always a safe place for you to land.