Many of us retreat to a “warm and safe” bunker to wait out the storms of life. But in the bunker’s dank and dark space, we become disconnected from REALITY and what God would have us do for His Kingdom—OUTSIDE.
God is beckoning us to follow Him into the light and be used to spread the Good News.
As followers of Christ, we must be connected to and immersed in the reality of what is happening around us. This isn’t heaven. We live on earth and we are to serve in its reality; not hide out in a bunker.
It is a natural and default reaction for all of us to deny reality at some level. Feeling threatened by so much uncertainty pervading every part of our lives and work, we hunker down to “let the storm pass.” But when we allow this form of unreality to dominate the way we live our life, it almost always sends us to a place where it is hard for God to use us.
Bunkers can be places of comfort, of course, but it is common to mistakenly treat them as if they represent reality. They do not. I have learned over time that only bad things happen while you sit it out in the bunker’s dank and dark accommodations. You become disconnected from reality that is happening outside in the real world. You become tired and weak. And, most damaging, when you finally do leave the bunker’s protection, you end up more afraid than you were when you retreated to its shelter.
If we stay in the bunker for a prolonged period of time, it puts us at risk to having a part of us die there. In fact, these long stays in the bunker almost guarantee that we will be locked away from, and ignorant about, the real world that changes every day outside. And if we ever make it out, we will be weak, out of shape and with diminished capacity to serve God and his Kingdom.
Perhaps the worst consequences of bunker living are the missed opportunities to lead that often come at “inappropriate times” and are disguised as distractions. We cannot see them in the bunker. It is too dark.
Bunker dwellers are denying reality just by their escape to its space where they cower in the darkness waiting for a “dream rescue” where someone will guide us out into the light. It could be a new job. Or a “fixed” relationship. Or a new house. Perhaps a new car. You get the idea.
Even though that dream rescue is elusive because it’s an illusion, there is a rescuer waiting outside the bunker’s barrier. That rescuer is Jesus.
Remember, Jesus stands ready at the bunker’s door to escort us into the light.
“These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” Colossians 2:17
