Clouds and Security

If I stay in the tenderness given by / the silent sunlight coming down through the trees / surely everything comes into my eyes will be a message – Yumi Arai

I see on the news that almost everything in life we ever thought was safe and secure isn’t.

Financial institutions have been breached. Social Media sites have been drained. Retail outlets have been ravaged. Whatever hasn’t been pillaged has been shown to be vulnerable. All I can say is, “Ha! Welcome to my world.”

I take privacy very seriously. People who made confessions should be delighted to know that God blessed me with a wonderful “forgetter” – a capacity to forget everything I’ve ever seen or heard within minutes. I am that proverbial chap who dares not stop on the stairs lest I forget whether I was heading up or down – and for what?

I find it amusing that we are encouraged never to give our Social Security number to anyone, and yet every institution and employer requires it – the same organizations that have been breached, looted, ransacked, or rifled.

I am reminded of the early days of the internet where we were told the only way to secure the information on our computers would be to pull the telephone cord – and the power cord. If we really, honestly, and truly want our information secure, we need to write it in a book, stick it in a steel box with a good padlock, then stick the box into a massive blast-proof safe, and drop it off a ship as it passes over the Mariana Trench in the South Pacific.

I’m not so sure. The ocean isn’t as deep as we once thought, and no part of it is out of reach for those willing to go to great lengths to retrieve what’s down there. I notice investors will spend millions to search wrecks for gold doubloons and other valuables – but hardly a centavo to clean up the Texas-sized island of garbage that’s floating around out there over “them thar” wrecks. What’s wrong with this picture?

Garbage isn’t the most romantic of topics, and yet I find taking out the trash results in a more pleasant home. The air’s fresher when our wrappers, scraps, food waste, and floor sweepings are gathered up and placed in the gray bin outside. Now, if folks want to sniff that stuff to find out more about our family, they’re welcome to; just clean up the mess afterwards.

Getting back to security: we do the best we can. There is nothing fool-proof. There is no encryption system that can’t be beaten, and it is the fool who thinks they can develop a fool-proof system. If it is a system, it can be beat. Doors can be kicked in, windows can be broken out, locks can be picked, safes and codes can be cracked, files can be searched, and the list goes on.

I supposed what interests me most isn’t the security of life (or lack thereof), but that always-elusive thing we call the quality of life. Who wants to go through life scared to death someone’s going to break in and steal anything?

I find it ironic how Jesus compares God with a burglar breaking into “a strong man’s house, tying him up, and stealing his valuables” (Mark 3). For God, it isn’t the gold, silver, or bearer-bonds that are valuable, but people like you and me: sinners – (gasp)!

We do what we can to be secure in our homes and persons, but I have long ago given up fretting about such matters. I have good locks on the home. They’re not impervious to great violence, but they’re good enough to keep honest folks honest. What we have at home is mostly stuff. It’s stuff we like and appreciate – but it’s all replaceable for the most part. We have smoke and CO2 detectors to keep us safe from fire or noxious fumes. We’ve got strong passwords on most of our internet connected sites – but we should change them more regularly – an area for improvement, but not for fretting.

While there are things in life that are vulnerable to malicious behavior and which could be considered insecure in matters of safekeeping, we can all be sure of one thing: God’s love for all people. We can be secure in that truth here in this, our valley.