Happy St. Patrick's Day! I know; watching the news lately makes it kind of hard to be happy. Yesterday, the news announced that the US life expectancy average had gone up. I thought, fabulous, more time to enjoy what is on the rest of the news: nuclear emergencies, earthquake tragedies, shootings, broken governments, rebellions, dictators... the world is just full of bad news. Food and gas prices are on the way up too, in case you have any money left to live on. What to do with news like that? Don't ignore it, we are to watch for the signs of our Lord's return. However, we shouldn't focus too much on the bad news either. The Light of the World will come back soon. Fear dominates the news headlines, but it should not dominate our lives.
We have talked, and I have written, about system failures before. The systems of this world are subject to catastrophic failure. The problem with the nuclear reactors in Japan is basically that a plant that generates electricity when things are operating normally cannot get electricity to cool the reactor cores. That is one of those crying jokes we hear from time to time; it would almost be funny if we weren't crying so hard. The fear in Japan must be thick enough to cut into blocks and stack by now. What would you say to a person consumed by fear? "It'll be alright." just doesn't seem to cut the mustard when it is nothing more than a vague assurance based on the words coming from a human mouth.
Jesus told the disciples to "fear not!" and then he calmed the storm. He did not give the disciples simply a vague assurance, but backed up his assurance with his authority. Jesus showed that he had the ability to calm the storm outside the boat, and the storm of fear going on inside the boat. The disciples had become afraid when the storm escalated beyond what they thought they could handle together. I wonder which of the disciples first looked at another and said something like, "We're sinking!" Soon the fear had spread to all of the disciples so much that when Jesus came walking across the waves one of the disciples had to throw some fuel on the fear fire by saying "a ghost!".
When we get in a fearful situation, our minds can be overwhelmed. Not usually by the first thing, or maybe even by the second thing, but as the fearful events begin to pile up, we look at the fear and forget to look at the Lord. The disciples had just watched Jesus feed thousands with a boy's lunch box, and yet they were surprised to see him walking on the water. Would they have been afraid if Jesus had walked out to the boat without the storm and the terrified, "We're gonna die!" that one of the disciples must have spoken in his fear? Probably not. But the storm, the darkness, the noise of the wind and thunder, the sight of Jesus walking out on top of the storm-tossed waves, and perhaps any of us might have wanted to do the foolish thing and given up with the Savior standing right there at hand.
In Daniel 10:12 we find this:
Then he said to me, "Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words." The angel not only told Daniel to not fear, but assured him that his words had been heard.
Why is this action so important? One of our great fears is that our prayers are going nowhere or that no one is listening as we pour out our fears in prayer. The angel assured Daniel that his prayer had been heard and that action had been ordered because of his prayer.
Far to the east, across thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean, fear is spreading too. Fear has always spread quickly, but our modern telecommunications systems allow the spread of fear to be almost instantaneous worldwide. However, those same systems also allow us to spread words of comfort and love. Our prayers are heard by God too, and that is a great comfort to all of us. One of the simplest, most needed and most often overlooked prayers is that very basic, "I'm scared, Lord!" Push the pride away and try that one in a moment of fear or stress. Listen to what God says. I have felt the peace of God come over me in response to a prayer very much like that. Of course I tried to use bigger words and not admit to being frightened (see, bigger word), but the plain fact was that I just needed to admit before God, "I'm scared, Lord!"
Have a courageous day in the Lord!
Bucky
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