“Wellness rooms” and fireplaces that lead to escape tunnels

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In these financially stressful times, if your home often doubles as an office, workout gym, movie theater, and restaurant, you’re not alone. Now let’s add another space you may not know you need: “wellness rooms.”

According to a Dallas designer, “Spaces for wellness, retreat, and recharging are all really popular right now.” You can create “soundbathing” spaces to immerse yourself in soothing instrumental and natural sounds. You can sleep on a bed that uses low-frequency sounds and vibrations. You can even shower using technology that customizes water, steam, lighting, and music options.

A New York designer says, “Having a private space is essential. A wellness room should be a space where the outside world dissolves; no background noise, no movement beyond your own. This is where you go to let go; to drop into something quieter, something deeper.”

Then there’s the other side of the spectrum: “panic” rooms are booming as well. One home near Dallas is being outfitted with an underground tunnel connecting a bunker to the client’s home. The trend is no longer just for the wealthy: one company makes $20,000 bunkers for people who “drive Chevy pickup trucks, not Ferraris.”

Storage buildings in South Dakota have been converted into leasable bunkers for the same purpose. People are installing secret gun closets, panic rooms, and moving fireplaces that lead to escape tunnels. In one home, the fireplace opens while the James Bond theme is played on a nearby piano.

According to a 2023 survey, one-third of American adults are preparing for a doomsday scenario, spending a collective $11 billion over twelve months to do so.

When “everything bitter is sweet”

We can make all the preparations we can make, but they may not be enough. As today’s anniversary of the Titanic disaster reminds us, the ship was “unsinkable” until it wasn’t. (For more, see my website article, New images show Titanic crew gave their lives to save others.)

Bunkers cannot protect us from pancreatic cancer or panic rooms from traffic accidents. In fact, placing our security in buildings built by humans can blind us to the most significant and urgent issues our souls face today.

On Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus spent much of the day teaching the people in the temple precincts. When a group was “speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings” (Luke 21:5), he warned them: “The days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (v. 6). In AD 70, the Romans fulfilled his prediction. I have stood many times beside the first-century pavement cratered by massive blocks from the temple “thrown down” by Titus and his soldiers.

A thousand years earlier, King Solomon warned the people, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). However, he also observed, “To one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet” (Proverbs 27:7).

The problem is, we don’t know it at the time.

I was so lost I had no idea I was lost

Imagine that you and everyone you know have been blind for your entire lives. You would not know what you do not know. You would assume that the world can be known only by touch, smell, taste, and sound. You wouldn’t ask someone to heal your blind eyes because you wouldn’t know that you need to be healed.

The Bible warns soberly, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). I can testify personally to the effectiveness of Satan’s work. Growing up in Houston, Texas, I was so lost that I had no idea I was lost. I was not searching for the gospel because I did not know it existed to be sought.

I thought church was what church members chose to do with their Sunday mornings just like golf was what golfers did with their weekends, neither of which seemed relevant to me. If Christians had not left the church building to bring the church to me, I would never have come to them.

This is why God’s word commands us: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter” (Proverbs 24:11). If you saw a child who was about to step in front of an oncoming car, would you do all you could to save them? If your doctor discovers that you have life-threatening cancer, do you want her to avoid telling you so as not to hurt your feelings, or do you want her to do all she can to save your life?

“His energy that he powerfully works within me”

Holy Week is a wonderful time for spiritual conversations with people who might not otherwise seem interested. According to researcher Dr. Thom Rainer, 82 percent of unchurched people are at least somewhat likely to attend church if invited; the number is even higher for significant holidays like Easter.

However, if offering such an invitation and sharing the gospel seems daunting, let’s close with this good news: the One who came to open blind eyes through his incarnate body now wants to do the same through ours.

Oswald Chambers explained: “Eternal life is not a gift from God. It is the gift of God—the gift God makes of himself to his children. This same life, not a copy of it, is manifested in us when we are born of God” (his emphasis).

Consequently, he added:

The weakest among us can experience the power of Jesus Christ if we are willing to let go. If instead we cling to our own power, we will blur the life of Jesus inside us. We have to keep letting go, keep identifying with him. Slowly and surely, the great full life of God will invade us in every part of our being, and those we meet will sense that we have been with Jesus.

“Christ in you” is “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Jesus entered our broken world in his incarnate body and again in ours. Now we are called to “tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ” (v. 28 NLT).

When this is our purpose, we can say with Paul,

“For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (v. 29).

For what purpose will you “toil” today?

Quote for the day:

“Our high and privileged calling is to do the will of God in the power of God for the glory of God.” —J. I. Packer

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