Can We Be Absolutely Safe?

   On day 8 of our recent trip, we docked at the English port of Liverpool. Our excursion that day was to go to Chester, an old English town south and east of the big port city.

   After taking the tour, coming back to the ship to eat lunch, I decided to walk off and explore the Liverpool dock area and the surrounding city, at least as far as walking could take me.

   Tucked away in a garden beside St. Nicolas Church was a sculpture dedicated to the victims of the WWII blitz in 1940-42. German bombers had pounded this city, especially the dock area, in order to try to stop the supplies coming into Britain from the west. Upwards of 4,000 civilians died in these air raids.

   The modern day art piece was placed in the garden in 2000 as a memorial of all those who had gone through this rough time, especially those who died.

   The depiction shows a young mother, clutching a toddler girl, while she implores her son to come down from his perch and go with her to the air raid shelter for safety from the bombs. The boy is busy fighting the invaders with his model plane, a more important job for him than running off to the shelter.

   These shelters were definitely safer than being caught out in the streets, with bombs bursting, shrapnel flying, and buildings falling, but there was a relativity to this concept. Even shelters in Liverpool suffered from direct bomb hits where all inside were killed.

   The headline of The Brunswick News screamed out at me this morning:

                          ARE WE SAFE ?

   My questions as I looked at this were, "Are We Completely Safe?" "Can We Ever Be?"

   No matter the shelters, or the agents at all the airports, or a border fence, there is no such thing as absolute safety. Relative safety is all we have.

   I see in this sculpture above that this family has no man present. Presumably, he is off fighting somewhere away from his wife and kids, trying to keep them safe as well as he can. I thank God for those men and women doing that today.

   Just like those in the blitz in Liverpool in the dark days of WWII, and like those in the World Trade Center in 2001, we each have no control over the events that might overtake us.

   The only safe place to be is in the center of God's Will. If we and our loved ones are in that spot, no matter the circumstance, we are safe.

   There was life after the blitz, whether you died in it or not...