Friday, December 11

The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of, who shall I be afraid?
—Psalm 27:1

As Americans, living in a country abundant with opportunity and possibility, we rarely think of the catastrophic damage that can occur just by an unusual awakening in the morning. We expect to have bright and gleaming mornings, or at least, mornings of familiar routine.  We too often take it for granted that we will wake every morning like we did the previous day without complication, without fear, without tragedy.

Yet we know that such glib assumptions of the day's events are unrealistic. We will have mornings that don't begin as other mornings. We will be exposed to tragedy, we will wake with grief, we will greet the day alone, we will hear unexpected and distressing news. All such situations leave us with fear. The only thing promised to us in this life is that the Lord will be our strength. The Lord will be our light. The Lord will be our salvation.

There are moments in life where fear needs to caution or dictate how we will or how we should approach certain circumstances and situations.  Fear itself becomes the gift to warn us of possible danger, or to awaken us to possibilities that we were unwilling to consider. Since fear doesn't always signal danger, we needn't let it paralyze us. Fear should never hold us captive. 

Instead we can rely on God's light and strength to be with us as we encounter and communicate with our fear and gain the wisdom it has to offer.  After that, we can let fear go and move on. Fear is merely the vehicle through which, with God's help, we will come to  fuller  knowledge and deeper trust.

Gracious God, when fear threatens to overtake me, give me the confidence to trust in your light,and strength to face the fear and learn what it has to teach me.