Thought for the Day 07/05/21 - Wobbly towers

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I grew up in Risca in the Far East of Wales, which now lies in Caerphilly County and given the medieval history of the border lands and the heritagte I stepped into, castles were always going to play a big part in my family's days off.

No-one majored on the history of violence and bloodshed, or the oppression of the native Welsh people, so these castles were great places for a picnic and were guaranteed to capture the imagination of the young.

We had a castle down in Newport that was a very frail looking ruin gradually falling into the River Usk, but Caerphilly ... Caerphilly Castle was a massive and magnificent mega-star on the crumbling Welsh castles scene!

It was fear of a Welsh prince - Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, that inspired Caerphilly, the mightiest medieval castle in Wales.

The Marcher Lord Gilbert de Clare realised he needed a really formidable fortress in double-quick time to deal with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, so from 1268 he set about building the biggest castle in Wales. Huge walls, towers and gatehouses and sprawling water defences covering a total of 30 acres ... three times the size of that great modern Welsh bastion, the Principlaity Stadium in Cardiff.

But the distinctive feature of Caerphilly Castle to this very day is that it's got a wonky tower.

Massive walls and a wonky tower

That tower leans precariously at ten degrees from the vertical, which is more than the leaning tower of Pisa.

As a boy I used to fantasise about Norman soldiers and attacks on that castle, and dreaded the thought of being a soldier having to climb up there when under attack to defend that wonky tower ... dreading the prospect that I'd be up there and  it would fall.

What's the point of trusting your defence and safety to what looked likely to become a tumbling tower?

And that's the kind of thinking that underlies the verse that we're thinking about today:

"The name of the Lord is like a strong tower;

the righteous person runs to it and is set safely on high."

                                                            Proverbs 18:10

Taking refuge in Tumbling Towers

There's no doubt that adult experience gives a clear view of the fragility of our lives.

When Mam's apron strings are no longer there to cling to, we start to realise quite how much it can take to hold things together ... but we're OK, right, because we've got our personal defences to run to?!

Well, there's only one wonky tower in Caerphilly Castle, but there are multitudes of wobbly towers we find people clinging to as places of dubious refuge from the sense of our human fragility.

In our verse there in Proverbs 18:10, the “name” of God signifies not the covenant name 'Yahweh' itself, but His attributes, especially here His pledge and His power to protect.

The metaphor “a strong tower” indicates that God is a secure refuge. The illustration is explained in the phrase that comes next, because that metaphor of 'running to' the Lord refers to a whole-hearted and unwavering trust in God’s protection, just as is envisaged as riding on the wings of eagles in Isaiah 40:31.

The Lord's tower is “is high” or “is inaccessible.” That's a military expression, stressing the effect of the trust ... height advantage gives security from danger ... and the following verse contrasts with this one here, highlighting the folly of those who are rich and (unlike the righteous) trust in their wealth and not in God.

The Point

The point is that in the light of our insecurity in this life, human beings show amazing ingenuity in designing and building towers of defence of their own.

But none give us such security as the pledge and power of God Who covenants to care for His people. 

So many of our own designs result in wobbly towers.

The Takeaway

Let's take an audit of what our lives are built on, see what we run to, and see if our foundations are sound or wobbly in reality, because it is the Name of the Lord that is the strongest of towers ... the righteous run to Him and are kept eternally safe.