Everyone Needs A Base...

Everyone Needs a Base by Anna

Everyone needs a base.

I've been seeing the above verse almost everyday now for a long time--my Bible almost always falls open at the same spot, however often I try to correct it--and I knew it would really come in handy someday. Looks like today's the day--I'm writing a study that's been stewing in my head for years now, and this verse is the perfect complement.

Anyway, everyone needs a base. A starting/reference point, a headquarters, a home--a foundation. Everyone. Even people who don't realize it--it's woven into the very fabric of our being. We don't even think about it--it's always there. Even in fiction (when you read something, you usually learn almost as much about the author as as you do the actual book, and I've read quite a few books) it's there. When characters go on the inevitable quests and journeys, all but a very few don't have something they want to get back to, a family, a home, a friend...a base. People who don't have bases naturally want them--want a reason to keep going, to keep living, to keep running on this giant, mudball version of a mouse's wheel that makes no sense--that's not worth it--without a base. 

Unfortunately, just like in baseball (I think, anyway...I've never been very...shall we say...interested in sports) you can lose most bases very easily. In an instant, without warning, all your reasons to keep going, all your bases, all your foundations can get ripped away from you and leave you with nothing. Nothing at all. Everything, everyone you love, you care for, what or who you've invested your very life in...all gone. Irreversibly, irrevocably gone. Car accidents. Falls. Cancer. Bad economy (if your base is money or depends on money, like most things). Fires. Suicides. Homicides. Drownings. There are so many ways people can die. So many ways you can lose everything. So many ways the rug can get yanked out from under you. Loved ones--family and friends--can so very easily die or abandon you. Homes can go up in smoke (literally or figuratively). Riches are a lovely, ever-so-slippery snake, with you today and gone tomorrow. People lose their bases every day. What makes you think you're safe? 

My base used to be my family, my home--where I feel safe. My security blanket. I didn't even think about it--not really--because I couldn't conceive of ever losing them. They are just there. Of course they always will be. I'd always have a starting point, a fall-back position, for life in the world. And if I'd kept thinking that, who knows what would have happened to me when I discovered--the hard way--that that wasn't quite true. (Because, sooner or later, everyone does.) 

Fortunately for me, my parents are thinkers. Realistic thinkers who see the world as it is, see all those horrible possibilities and knows that, from a purely physical, world-wise standpoint, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from happening to us. It's rather depressing. 

I inherited some of that. (Thankfully, only some.) So, after a year or so of hair-pulling and sobbing and yelling and burying my head in the sand, I learned to switch my base. I'm still learning--don't think I'll ever finish learning it, not in this life anyway--but at least now I know losing any/all of what (or those of whom) is now my secondary base wouldn't outright kill me. (However much I might want it to then.) 

I had it easy. I've grown up with God as a member of the family--grown up knowing that I had something no one and no thing could ever possibly take away. I do have a base. A primary base, One who won't die, won't leave me, and will, forever and always, take care of me and my loved ones. And--if He takes them--at least I know I'll see them again. (Though, if you think about it, that's not really a 'least'!) He's my everlasting foundation, my cornerstone, a base no one can take away from me. Someone who'll always love me, no matter what. I can go anywhere, do anything, without fear that when I get back, my base will be gone...because my Base was with me the whole time. Psalm 27:16 "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me." Psalm 56:3-4 "Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God (I will praise His word), in God I have put my trust; I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?" Psalm 48:14 "For this is God, our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even to death."