The Presence of Shelter

“I will abide in Your tabernacle forever;

I will trust in the shelter of Your wings.”

Psalm 61:4

 Earlier this week I stumbled upon a book entitled “Good Night, Mr. Tom” by Michelle Magorian. Published in 1981, it chronicles the fictionalized life of a young evacuee during the Second World War. The evacuee, a young boy named William, is placed into the care of an old man in the English countryside, and through the old man’s loving care, comes to embrace life. I have not finished the book yet, but so far I have enjoyed it.

Last night as I was reading, I came across the following: “We’s got another busy day, William. Got to start diggin’ a trench for the Anderson shelter this afternoon. That’ll put muscles on you.” I read this and wondered what an Anderson shelter was. So I searched on the Internet and was surprised by the amount of information available concerning these shelters. I quickly realized that for a generation of Englishmen, Anderson shelters were as much a part of the collective consciousness as grocery stores and pubs. Here’s a little of what I found:

In 1938, when the Prime Minister Chamberlain announced that war with Germany had commenced, he tasked Sir John Anderson with preparing the homeland against German error raids. Anderson, then, oversaw the design and production of an inexpensive bomb shelter that came to be known as the “Anderson Shelter.”

These shelters were designed for six people. The main section was formed from six corrugated steel panels. Flat corrugated steel panels were bolted on to form the sides and the ends of the shelter, one of which contained a door. The shelters were 4.5 feet wide, 6.5 feet long, and 5.75 feet high, and were constructed above ground before being placed into a hole dug about 3 ½ feet deep. Once they were placed, they were buried with a thick layer of dirt and grass.

3.5 million shelters Anderson shelters were built in Britain during the war, and many of them still remain. In the days of the war, these little shelters littered the countryside, a visible and constant reminder to that generation of the threat of death from the sky.

When I read this, I realized afresh how difficult it is for a reader to enter into the minds of another generation. We can read the words of a narrative and still fail to place it within its historical and emotional context. It is difficult, for example, having not lived through that period of time in England, for me to understand the continual psychological stress these folks endured.

I think this information about a bomb shelter struck a chord with me because I also grew up with a bomb shelter. When my parents built their home in 1963 in Seattle, they had a bomb shelter built into one end of the basement. I was told that, in the case of a nuclear attack, I was to go to the shelter. This was consistent with the teaching I received in my elementary school about a possible nuclear attack. We were taught to ‘duck and cover’ under our desks in the case of a nuclear attack. The message was clear: an atomic bomb could explode any moment.

I do not know how this affected the other children. I know how it affected me. I lived in anticipation of the bomb. I wasn’t immobilized by fear, but the thought of nuclear war did infiltrate my daily life and my confidence in the future. It was a fear lurking in the shadows of my mind.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan became the president of the United States, and around that time I began to hear began concerning something called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). This initiative sought to escape the ‘mutual assured destruction’ policies of the previous years by creating and implementing a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system which would prevent missile attacks from other countries reaching the United States. Wow. Perhaps, just maybe, I realized, incoming nuclear missiles could be shot down.

The first time I heard of SDI, I experienced a wave of hope. The anxiety I had carried since childhood, an anxiety I barely recognized, lessened. For the first time, I had hope that nuclear war might not mean the end of life as we knew it.

Younger people who did not go through the Cold War nor remember the “duck and cover” days will have trouble understanding and appreciating what the Strategic Defense Initiative meant to me. It is probably like trying to explain to someone my age what it was like for Englishmen to build and stock 3.5 million Anderson shelters.

Yes, the passage of time makes it difficult to enter into the experience of previous generations. The historic events and experiences I have been discussing all occurred within the last hundred years, and, in terms of history, that is a very short amount of time. And it is still difficult.

Well, if this is the case with events and experiences that occurred in the last hundred years, imagine the challenge of entering into events and experiences that occurred 2000 years ago -- or 4000 years ago! That challenge would be further complicated by differences not only in historical events, but also in language and culture.

This is the difficult task we face when we first read our Bibles. When we approach our Bibles, we find that we are reading documents written thousands of years ago. We are forced to cross barriers of time, culture, language, and geography as we seek to understand what the writers say. And this is not an easy task. But we need not despair. As long as we’re willing to do some work, we can cross those barriers. We have many resources to help us: the Holy Spirit (first and foremost), and then also commentaries, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and so forth. With study and reliance upon the Holy Spirit, we can discern the original meaning of the texts and reconstruct their contexts, sensing even the emotional surroundings.

The other difficult task we face as we read the Scriptures is making its teachings relevant to our lives today. We must find a way to take the experiences and teachings from the Bible and apply them to our lives. Or, to say it another way, we must rend the time-bound timeless, and then render the timeless timely. And again, it can be a difficult task. But here also, we need not despair. Again, our greatest resource is the Holy Spirit, and then we can also use commentaries and the like. With effort, we can identify contemporary situations, problems, or questions that are truly comparable to those faced by the original audience. And we can find analogous situations, and personal and communal applications.

Yep, if we are faithful and obedient in studying God’s Word, we will, by His grace, grasp more and more of what is presented to us. We will internalize the truths of God’s Word and permit them to bear fruit.

As I close, let me apply the two examples I gave above. I’m sure that for many Englishmen the Anderson shelter came to represent hope – hope of deliverance from death and hope of deliverance to life. For me, SDI symbolized a similar hope. The cross of Jesus Christ can be likened to these two things. The cross – in all it represents, the crucifixion, Resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ – symbolizes ultimate hope -- the ultimate hope and deliverance from eternal death and the ultimate hope of deliverance to eternal life. And now, even as a broken-down Anderson shelter can remind me of a past hope, the Cross of Christ and the Empty Tomb can remind me of my future hope.

I trust that as you study the Scriptures this week you are, by God’s grace, entering the biblical world and applying it to your lives.

“To them God willed to make known

what are the riches of the glory

of this mystery among the Gentiles:

which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Colossians 1:27

-Christian Pilet