Fear Fear

A good spring morning to you! The art of word play seems to have found a home in the American English. There was that book title Hurt People Hurt People by Sandra D. Wilson. As in, people who have been hurt tend to hurt other people. A couple of fellers back in the day did the Who's on First? skit. No doubt you have examples of your own. However, sometimes the word play isn't funny and doesn't work well. The person who lives fearing fear would be in a pitiable state. Many is the time Jesus said "Don't be afraid." So many are the cases of God's word telling us not to fear, that it has been pointed out that there is one 'do not fear' for every day of the year. Perhaps the idea was that we are to practice no fear for a year.

Advising someone to fear fear is of course terrible advice. There is no advantage in fearing fear. You may wonder about that presidential quote from back in the day. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." This came in his inaugural address of 1933 when it seemed that the nation had much to fear. Montaigne, a fellow from the 16th century, said, "The thing I fear most is fear." Of course neither was telling anyone to fear fear. What FDR saw in his lifetime was the panic that caused stock market collapse and the fear that sent stampedes to the banks. We have lived in similar times over the past few years. Fear causes all sorts of pain for others when panic spreads to a mob. For that reason we may well fear fear, but I don't advise anyone to get into that state.

What do we do then about this fear of fear? The same thing we do about fear itself! We obey Jesus. Prayer and faith work wonders over fear. Is it easy? Certainly not, fear seems to be one of our first 'go to' states for anything out of the ordinary. We can easily share fear and spread it like a virus. Which sort of brings us back to the first point. Fear fear, fearing fear, it's all just the devil's way of getting us away from living in Christ. We need the perfect love of Christ to cast out all that fear!

Have a better Monday in the love of Christ Jesus!

Bucky