veritas

Read: Mark 4:38; Luke 2:9; John 14:27.

There were shepherds in the fields, guarding their flocks by night. And the angel of the Lord came down and the glory of the Lord was all about them, and they were afraid. Not an exact quote, but you get the idea. The shepherds had no knowledge of a heavenly king, only an earthly one who took their wages without regard to their families and kept them on the bottom rung of the work force ladder. The celestial display that filled their eyes with light and their ears with sound also filled their hearts with terror.

Thirty years later, the disciples were caught out on the lake in a vicious storm. Jesus was in the stern of the boat, his head on a pillow, sound asleep. The disciples were so afraid for their lives that they woke Jesus, asking him, “Master, we’re dying here and you’re sleeping like nothing’s going on, don’t you care what happens to us?” Again, not an exact quote, but close enough.

The common denominator of these two stories is that ordinary men were caught in extraordinary circumstances, and the response was the same: fear. Why? It’s not like the shepherds had never been out in the night before, because that’s what shepherds did. Seeing a shooting star was nothing new to them, hearing a wolf’s call or a lion’s roar were commonplace, but the visions and sounds from Heaven on that one night caused them to lose their cool. And it’s not like the disciples were not used to being out on the lake fishing, both daytime and nighttime, for that was the way they earned their living. And they had been caught, I’m sure, in other storms. But when confronted with waves higher than any they’d ever before seen, and the circumstance of a rapidly deteriorating future state, their response was fear.

I have a leopard-print throw that I put around my shoulders when I accompany puppy out for his business each morning. Usually, only the three of us are up before dawn. But one morning last week I stepped back into the house and glanced into the kitchen just in time to see Jim toss a fresh coffee filter and its contents up into the air. He hadn’t known I was outside. And when he saw a flash of spots from the corner of his eye it was so out of the ordinary that he reacted with the fight or flight response. He looked at me sheepishly as I shrugged off the throw and placed it on the back of the sofa, said, “You scared me” and then went for the broom.

We are always faced with unknowns, but today, we are confronted with fear at almost every turn in life and with a magnitude unbelievable in scope.

A loved one has died, and we are faced with the prospect of pushing through the pain and grief of a life without them. Layoffs are plentiful but jobs are scarce. Homes are lost to foreclosure. Utility bills go unpaid and are eventually shut off. Never mind buying Christmas presents because putting food on the table seems an insurmountable task, and not every family has the luxury of a Friday backpack sent home from school. Let’s don’t even talk about how to keep enough money at hand for transportation just in case you’re called for a job interview. Fear runs rampant throughout our lives.

Soldiers are being deployed to combat zones, many of them for the third or forth or fifth time in less than ten years. Firefighters and police respond each shift to calls that would send most of us cowering in a corner with our hands over our ears and hats pulled down over our eyes. Fear of the unknown is a part of their daily life, yet the soldiers and the first responders go forward anyway. For when you have trained so often that your response to danger is second nature, and done without thinking, you simply just get on with it.

Heroes are not people without fear, they are simply people who do the next right thing in spite of it. I challenge you today to be a hero to yourself. Listen with your whole heart to the song of the angels, and fear not. Hear the words of the Master, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” And rejoice in the truth of a message for the ages: never trade the fear of what you know for the wonder of what you don’t.

Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never, never, never give up. Sing with me the words of faith: “I know who holds tomorrow, and I know who holds my hand.” And then listen to the celestial response as a host of angels join us in our praise.