Her Closet Was Her Refuge
42-year-old Sefa Cebeci was with her husband in a seven-story building in Duzce, Turkey, when just before 7:00 P.M. local time on November 12, 1999, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake shook the city. The building collapsed, and when all was said and done nearly 1,000 people were dead—including Sefa’s husband who was right beside her.
Despite rescue team leaders from some countries calling off the search for survivors after three days, an Israeli team pulled her from the rubble after nearly 5 days without food and water. She would have to have an arm amputated and her kidney failure from dehydration nearly killed her.
She was able to survive in freezing temperatures for 105 hours under tons of concrete. How? A closet fell on top of her and protected her from her collapsed house. Her closet became her refuge.
Of course, Jesus exhorted us to “enter into thy closet” to pray, rather make a vain, public show of ourselves (cf. Matthew. 6:6, KJV). The word “closet,” variously translated “inner room,” “your room,” “private room,” and “inner chamber” is translated “storehouse” or “warehouse” (Luke 12:24; Matthew. 24:26), and also “bedroom” or “chamber” (Genesis 43:30; 2 Kings 6:12; Zodhiates, Spiros). It refers to any place of privacy where one cannot be easily seen.
If we are to survive the challenges of life, we must seek refuge in our prayer closet. The peace and strength we find there will prepare us for every kind of calamity.
Strive To Find Rest
Jon Hamilton, with NPR, reports:
When you sleep in unfamiliar surroundings, only half your brain is getting a good night's rest.
"The left side seems to be more awake than the right side," says Yuka Sasaki, an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University.
The finding, reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology, helps explain why people tend to feel tired after sleeping in a new place.
... Sleep researchers discovered the "first-night effect" decades ago, when they began studying people in sleep labs. The first night in a lab, a person's sleep is usually so bad that researchers simply toss out any data they collect.
Vigilance is important but so is rest. We must not give up rest to be vigilant, but must learn, especially in threatening times, to pursue both. Even Jesus, at the height of his ministry, took the time to slip away to the mountains.
Not even the need to be vigilant overrides our need to find rest in God.
“So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall” (Hebrews 4:11).
"After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone" (Matthew 14:23).
City of Refuge
If you think the cell phone reception is bad in some of the places you’ve been, try Green Banks, West Virginia, where it’s none existent. That’s because electromagnetic signals are banned in Green Banks, lest they interfere with a large radio telescope that operates in the area. As a result, a growing number of people who claim to have Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) are moving there to find refuge from the signals they believe to be detrimental to their health.
“It’s a horrible thing," says one EHS sufferer … "you become a technological leper. Living here allows me to be more of a normal person.”
Although one study recently demonstrated a link between electromagnetic fields and the symptoms reported by those who suffer from EHS, the World Health Organization maintains that it’s not “a medical diagnosis.”
While all of this is being worked out in the medical world, those who sincerely believe they suffer from this condition at least have a city of refuge available to them.
You probably aren't worried about EHS, but there is one affliction that we all share--the harmful presence of sin. Fortunately, just as it's possible to find refuge from electromagnetic signals, there is a refuge for the sinner.
The Bible tells us that "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus took our sins upon Himself, offering us refuge from its power.