Where do we hide?  Al Quida and Taliban terrorists are on the loose in Afghanistan and Pakistan, pirates roam the high seas, madmen nearly have their fingers on nuclear launch buttons, the ice caps and glaciers are melting (so some say), our economy is melting down, bacteria that are everywhere can outsmart antibiotics, there's too much snow and too much rain and too much heat and too much cold, everything--and I do mean everything--we eat and drink is killing us, and now we have "swine flu."

"Thorns and thistles," said God to Adam as He showed him the way out of the garden.  Obviously, literal "thorns and thistles," but more, a thorny and prickly world that throws up one challenge after another.  So we face them and survive as best we can.  And, inevitably, one will come that we will not survive.  Something or someone will get to us and take us down because the world we now live in--the world outside the garden of God--wasn't intended or designed to be our place.

Knowing fully the dangers of our hostile world, the ancient Songbook of Israel tells us where to hide:  "God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea" [Psa. 46:1, 2], and "You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance" [Psa. 32:7].