Sharing in Security With LoveINC

By Robin Fleming

I would like you to close your eyes for a couple of minutes as you think about the words “secure” and “security.” Let those words roam around your mind, bring up images, and stir up feelings freely and with no expectation of anything in particular. Ready…go.

I’m curious what came to mind for you. As I did this exercise myself, I saw locks on trunks, storage units, dump loads tied down in our trailer, and guards stationed at a shopping mall. I heard calls of “Batten down the hatches!” and “Secure the perimeter!” I thought about secure attachment in relationships. And I experienced feelings of comfort, safety, certainty, and being held.

It is from a place of safety, certainty, and feeling held and comforted that we are able to make wise decisions, be intentionally responsive rather than emotionally reactive to difficulties, and move from just surviving to thriving. But – as has been pointed out already this month – the stressors that come from financial insecurity tend to foster feelings directly opposed to comfort, safety, certainty, and being held. And, in a self-perpetuating cycle, anxiety- and fear-driven decisions often feed the instability of the situation, leading to more stress, which leads to more reactive decisions, and on it goes.

How on earth, then, can a person have a sense of comfort, safety, certainty, and being held when they are living on a shoestring? When covering next month’s rent is far from guaranteed? When physical or mental health concerns or the demands of single parenting make it difficult to bring in a consistent paycheck?

The answers are best found in healthy community, where relationships are interdependent and mutually protective and nourishing. Previous posts talked about this as well, emphasizing that God has always called His people to be His means of offering comfort, safety, certainty, and support to their neighbors. When this happens, people in need move out of the thinness and poverty of isolation and into the abundance of shared life, shared struggle, shared hope, and shared resources.

This is what Love INC is striving for. A local church steps into partnership with the Love INC family, committing to interact with their neighbors in ways that offer greater relational, material, and spiritual security. A Love INC volunteer or staff member listens and responds to a neighbor in need on the phone, offering the safety and comfort of true, compassionate interest in the whole person; the security of being created, known, and loved uniquely by God; and the possibility of being held by a healthy church family. Volunteers and staff serve in the Healthy Habits program, their presence and interactions inviting participants into a community that knows the comfort, safety, certainty, and sense of being held in the middle of the hard things. It’s God’s way with His people. It’s the way of Jesus’ followers with each other and the world. It is who we are.