Take a moment to read Deuteronomy 19 before reading the devotional below.
“Tag you’re it!” began one of my favorite games as a kid. Unfortunately, there were only two kids in my family: my sister and me. Tag with two people is always a complicated game of tagging and tagging back. In elementary school, however, there were giant groups of kids playing tag at recess. Then the games got interesting, and a new element was introduced. We called it “goo,” though I have no idea why. Other people called it “base” or “home.” Regardless of what it was called, it was the safe place. It was the one place that you couldn’t get tagged.
Deuteronomy explores issues of justice that contain an intriguing parallel to “goo.” They were called “cities of refuge.” The idea was that if someone accidentally commits murder, then there should be some way of being safe from vengeance or justice. So God instituted the “cities of refuge.” In essence, they were a safe place that accidental criminals could flee to for mercy. They were a place that stood for all the virtues that are higher than and greater than justice, like grace. God wanted his people to know that if you run in the right direction, you can always find the mercy and grace that you need.
Those cities of refuge played another role for God’s people. They stood as a living symbol of what God was ultimately going to offer his people in Jesus. Jesus would be the one person to whom any human being could run for mercy at any time and in any place. There is nothing that you have done that Jesus mercy can’t cover. There’s nothing in your past that Jesus’ grace can’t overcome. The only question is: will you run in the right direction? Will you run away from Jesus or will you run towards him?