A circular slipping into the mailbox lied on the floor while I walked into my office. AS I picked it up, it said that one in four Taiwanese died of cancer and every 74 minutes a Taiwanese was killed in the car accident; yet our insurance plan would provide the complete protection against accidents, cancer, and huge numbers of medical expenses. The ad is obviously from an insurance company selling its health insurance. One Chinese saying goes, “Fortune as unpredictable as the weather, every day may bring fortune or calamity,” which means unexpected things may happen at any moment. A devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami for example just took many lives in Japan.

People concerned about their lives would purchase many types of insurances such as life insurance, business insurance or other insurances. The more coverage an insured plan has the much more money a person has to pay. But will a good life insurance police keep us safe and render us a peaceful heart? Perhaps not. In Isaiah 28:18 the Lord said, “Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through; you will be beaten down by it.” Eugene Peterson has rendered a vivid and well-suited translation: “Then you’ll see that your precious life insurance policy wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Your careful precautions against death were a pack of illusions and lies.” What the Lord meant was that the children of the Lord were in vain when they tried to make a deal with death. They thought death would escape from them and disaster wouldn’t overtake them. However, “their careful precautions against death were only a pack of illusions.”

Where can we find safety or shelter? It does not lie in the best life insurance plan. Instead God has told his people that peace and rest are in him. “Here is a place of rest; let the weary rest here. This is a place of quiet rest” (Isaiah 28:12).