We lived for a while near Brechin, Scotland. It's what the British folks call a "cathedral city." If you have a cathedral then you're a city; otherwise, you're just a town! Brechin is small enough that if it weren't for their cathedral you'd debate whether they had crossed from village to town let alone reached city. What makes their cathedral unique is that it incorporates an 11th century round tower into it's construction. Standing there looking at it really brought home to me the meaning of Proverbs 18:10, which says:
The name of the LORD is a strong tower;
the righteous run to it and are safe.
While this particular tower came rather late in the game we were told that the original idea behind a castle was simply as a place of refuge to flee to when a threat presented itself. You went inside and locked the door behind you and hopefully you had stored enough supplies to hold you until the threat got bored and went away.
But a "strong tower" has another side to it... In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Paul writes:
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Stonghold is another name for one of these towers of refuge. Paul's highlighting our tendency to find places to go besides turning to God. Old habits die hard and when there's trouble it's so easy to turn to old (inadequate) solutions-those places that we're used to turning before we turned to God. Paul's point is that those things (arguments and pretensions, he calls them) stand between us and realizing who God really is and just what He's able to do.
What would happen if instead of reacting--doing that first thing that comes to mind--we'd pause long enough to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ? That is, what if we'd go to a real place of safety and peace?
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