Refuge

Tuesday of the First Week of Advent

But all who take refuge in you will be glad;

they will sing out their joy for ever. Psalm 5:13

We walk in the brisk cold, our bodies warming with the steady movement. The landscape of the trail is familiar, but not completely known, and we pause at each junction to discuss the way forward.

I soon become aware that the picture I have in my mind of the twists and turns of this path is faulty. The trail coils right and up when I expect it to curve left and down. And just how many times does it cross and recross the stream?

Yet even while I seem to have lost all sense of direction, I know where I am. The trail itself is a refuge, the stream singing glad psalms to the Holy One, the bare trees raising limbs in homage. I am safe in God’s sanctuary.

We reach the bottommost section of this trail and I pause in awe at the formation of icicles along an overhang, brilliantly protecting whatever lies within that mystical space. A refuge within a refuge. I know I stand on holy ground.