Fear is quite a risky business. Sightseeing in Italy drove this point home. My friends and I were in Umbria, walking through ancient towns and churches. One bright, chilly afternoon in March we walked into a fortification on top of a hill. Built after Roman rule dissolved and every town depended on itself, this high, rectangular stone wall bore arrow-slits around its top and a turret on each corner. We strolled through a wide passageway where the city gate had stood onto a grassy interior courtyard. These days, I imagined, picnics, weddings, local celebrations happened here.

Curious, I climbed up a turret’s stone steps. Unobscured by trees or tall buildings, the panorama seemed to curve with the earth, a quiet retreat above the fray. And then I realized the turreted wall was a military installation. It allowed guards to see attackers far off, to gather residents home from the fields and inside a locked gate. Then, from the turrets, the guards could handily ward off the threat.

But imagine if the marauders were able to encamp for a while, allowing no one out to work the farms; no one to bring in water, firewood, or food; no possibilities for sanitation or burial. Then this walled city would be a death trap.

Fortifications—whether built of stone or emotion or rationale—wall the enemy out, yes. But they also wall us in. A rush to self-protection can destroy us, as we trip on the very snare we’ve set. Thanks be to the Holy One for a different stronghold: a Presence who promises to move us past walls that separate and destroy, who remembers our need, who frees us in ways we couldn’t have imagined. After all, says the psalmist, we are only human, captive to our fear and the destruction it spawns. God’s grace and mercy are our real refuge, open to all.