Scripture
Psalm 56: 3
When I am afraid, I will put my trust and faith in You.
John 14: 27
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.
Reflection
I have been wondering lately about this idea of fear. I believe that there is a lot of fear in our world these days. There is fear for the future, there is fear of the unknown, there is fear of the ‘other,’ and sometimes fear of ourselves. There are many times when I wonder if these fears are based on the idea of losing who and what we are. I wonder if they are fears that are really about the unknown because many of us feel as if the world is out of our control and we really don’t know that the future, sometimes what tomorrow, may bring. When we find ourselves faced with these types of fears it is easy for us to begin to hold fast to who and what we are today, we entrench ourselves into our understanding of ourselves and our world and refuse to move, and in doing so quite often we increase our fear. But what happens when we allow these fears to exist in our lives and in the world? Kahlil Gibran, the poet and prophet wrote,
“It is said that before entering the seaa river trembles with fear.She looks back at the path she has traveled,from the peaks of the mountains,the long winding road crossing forests and villages.And in front of her,she sees an ocean so vast,that to enterthere seems nothing more than to disappear forever.But there is no other way.The river can not go back.Nobody can go back.To go back is impossible in existence.The river needs to take the riskof entering the oceanbecause only then will fear disappear,because that’s where the river will knowit’s not about disappearing into the ocean,but of becoming the ocean.”
When we are faced with the fear of the world today, as Christians, we are challenged to turn to God. The scriptures from Psalms and John speak to God’s help in our time of need. Yet, even in turning to God I don’t believe that that means that the fear no longer exists, but rather God offers us strength and guidance to come through the fear. As the poem from Gibran states, in speaking of the river, that our lives are forever moving forward, we can not go back. There is only one way for us to go and that is to go forward. As the river must move forward and enter the sea, we must go forward, knowing that to go forward we must, sometimes, come face to face with our fear. We must embody courage, but not the courage that says that fear is not important, but rather as the wall hanging in my office says, “Courage is not the absence of fear or despair, but the ability to conquer them.” Or as the movie the Princess Diaries states, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the judgement that something is more important than fear.”
I remember having a conversation with someone and we were talking about loss, grief, and fear. They stated that they wished that I had not had to go through all of the challenges that I have faced in my life. As I thought about this conversation, I wondered about Gibran’s poem and the fact that the river was not disappearing but rather it was becoming the ocean. I also thought about the fact that the river could never go back. All of the challenges that I have faced have shaped me into the person that I am right now. All of the challenges, including fear, that we have all faced have shaped us into the people that we are, we can never go back to being something that we used to be, our only choice is how might we move forward. Maybe when we reach out to God in the face of fear and uncertainty, it is not so that God removes those from our lives, but rather God helps us to grow through them and become something more, maybe something different. I wonder if we when faced with fear of change, fear of the unknown, we hold so tight to what we know that we prohibit God from helping us move through those times and becoming something different. I think that the challenge is to see that becoming something different is, in and of itself, not something to fear. Yes, it might be uncomfortable, it might be challenging, but the fear that we feel as we walk through those times, well, it might just bring us to something new, something we never imagined. So, yes the world is filled with fear, uncertainty, and the unknown, but let us always face forward, leaning on God’s strength, and become the proverbial ocean.
Prayer
God of infinite strength, we ask the you be with in these times of fear and uncertainty. We ask for your guidance to lead us through these times, to something more. We ask for the wisdom to know that letting go of who we were is how we might become something new. Give us the courage to face the future, knowing that you are walking with us. Help us to know that we can’t go back, but only forward, and with you by our side, we can move into a new future for us all. We ask this in the name of the one who walks on wounded feet, your son, Jesus. Amen.
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