Fear Makes the Wolf Bigger Than He Is 2.0

This, then, is addressed (primarily) to people of faith.  In Christianity, Jesus says quite directly and specifically,

fear not.  

So do angelic messengers.  So does God.

In other traditions, there are exhortations away from fear as well.

God does not fear.  God, as we would understand, can and does, mourn, repent, rejoice, laugh.  But God does not fear.  And God exhorts us not to – fear – but notice what is said and what is not said.

What is not said is that there is nothing to be afraid of.

There are wolves.  

Next to God, they just aren’t all that big.

And that, perhaps, is how the saints among us, ancient and modern, can stand up against their own fears with calm and even with joy – because next to God, a wolf is a small thing indeed.

Or maybe even more accurately, they simply see with a clarity the rest of us lack – the clarity that recognizes the wolf for what he is, but never, ever, ever, for more than what he is.

When I am frozen like a deer in the headlights, I am focused on the object of my fear to the exclusion of all else.  Literally, I can see nothing but that fear.

When, however, I am focused on God, I can see nothing else, including my fears.  And because I do not see them do they evaporate.

I may well be in real danger.

But I do not have to be afraid.

Wolves walk the land – every day.  But they do not, they cannot, dictate my actions, my responses, unless I allow it – unless I stop looking at God and look only at them.

For when I awaken and direct my gaze to my Lord, it turns out that a wolf is just . . . merely . . . only . . . a wolf.

No less.

But no more.

The Bringer of the Dawn

When I was a student chaplain in the children’s hospital section of Robert Wood Johnson hospital in New Jersey, I was called to sit and wait with parents whose son was being cut out of his car by the jaws of life.  They had been to the scene and sent to the hospital to await his arrival.  Down I rushed, in my standard black suit with my chaplain badge prominent around my neck.

When the mom saw me, a horrible thing happened.  She dropped to the floor – literally dropped – as if the very life had been sucked out of her, she dropped and began screaming her pain and agony.

She thought my presence meant he had died.  After about the half second it took me to realize what was happening, I did the only thing I could think to do – I dropped to the ground beside her.  I laid as close as I could get to her and put my face right into hers.  I called her by name.  And I began to tell her that her son was not dead. . . that she had seen him with her own eyes and knew he lived.  I touched her, I held her, I pulled her face into mine and we laid in the middle of that hospital hallway floor together until she could see me and hear me and believe me.

I’m sure it was only moments, but it seemed like forever, that time when she could see or hear nothing except me dressed in black, come, she was sure, to tell her the worst news of her life.  Somehow the moments passed and slowly we arose, hands held together and slowly she could believe that if I was an angel, it was not as the Angel of Death that I came, but as the Angel of Love.

That’s how I see God in my woundedness . . . lying there on the floor beside me . . . speaking softly, gently, persistently, into my heart, that my worst fears are not true, that God is right there, that the dawn comes.  I, of course, was and am limited by skin, but not so God, who lies not beside us, but crawls up inside the hardest parts of us . . . the dark places where no dawn has ever been . . . and whispers . . . I am here . . . fear not.

God of the dawn, yes, but even more, God of our darkness. . . Lord of our sickness . . . Ruler of our lies . . . Healer of our brokenness . . . Companion of our lostness . . . Lover of our worst selves . . . Inhabiter of the worst of our black holes . . . there in all of what we would hide even from ourselves, lives the Bringer of the Dawn.

Things are as bad as they seem . . .

The economy continues to reel.  Cause and effect and effect and cause are continuously debated while behind the statistics and the arguments, real people search for real work and real meaning.

The earth seems to make war upon itself as disaster upon disaster are heaped one upon the other, with no relief in sight.

Things really are as bad as they seem.

Thus it has ever been; and thus, I suspect, it will ever be.

Things are as bad as they seem.  And I wonder why we are surprised.  We spend so much time preparing for the rainy day, never seeming to grasp that the very nature of the rainy day is its unexpectedness.  We prepare for floods and get droughts . . . stock up on food only to find that it’s water we need . . . set aside money only to have the value of the money turn to ash.

Things are as bad as they seem.  But so what?

It’s not Pollyanna speaking to say that acknowledging reality is not the same as being held captive to it.

We in the United States seem to be spoiling for a fight with we know not who for reasons we know not why.  I’m thinking it’s because we the people somehow believe that we were promised something we cannot recognize by someone we cannot name.  We name that something ‘happiness’ and God protect the one who would get in our way of its pursuit.

We so proudly proclaim that we are a ‘God-fearing nation’, as if that were a good thing.  Maybe, just maybe, we would do better to be God-relying, God-trusting, God-embracing.  For surely what we need is more trust in the source of our true security.  More trust and less fear, even, and perhaps especially, of God.

After all, Fear not! wasn’t a suggestion.