Fear
Posted by: forthrightmag <forthrightmag@...>
http://www.forthright.net
Going straight to the Cross
Shrink your fears down to size.
Fear
by Warren Baldwin
When I was a kid my family lived in a large house
out in the country. The house was over 100 years
old when I lived in it, and it had some of the
features of an old house: creaking floors, rooms
with squeaky doors. It was a neat old house, the
kind that has character. Memories. Memories from
families that lived there before us and memories
that we created. Lots of them.
I love the memories, and I loved the house. That
house was especially neat when our cousins from
the city came to visit. With all the rooms and the
dim lighting upstairs, my brothers and I came up
with some pretty ingenious methods of entertaining
our cousins. Well, entertaining ourselves, anyway,
at our cousins' expense.
For example, all we had to tell the younger
cousins was, "There are lions and bears up there,
so you better stay away." That worked when we
wanted to keep them out of our room for a while.
It also made it funny when their parents told them
to go to bed, but they were afraid to go up into
the black expanse of the "upstairs."
"Good night, Brian. Watch out for the bears. Don't
know how you can sleep with those things lurking
around waiting to eat you."
One time, we made a ghost out of a sheet. We
strung a line from upstairs down the staircase and
attached the ghost. When a couple of the cousins,
girls this time, were getting ready to go
upstairs, one of my brothers let fly with the
ghost. Down the stairs it came, with us boys
howling and the girls screaming.
I miss that house. And the cousins.
I think by now they have gotten over the fear that
Jim, Bob, and I stirred within them. In that
context, fear was a pretty harmless thing. Cousins
teasing cousins about bears, lions, ghosts. Of
course, there were parents there to assure the
younger ones that there were no such creatures on
the premises. "Look, I'll turn a light on. Do you
see any mean creatures? You'll be fine." And they
were.
But fear never completely leaves us, does it? When
we are children, it was fear of lions and bears.
And ghosts. But when we get older, many of the
fears are of a more serious nature, aren't they?
Making enough money to pay the bills. Keeping a
job in an age of cut-backs, lay-offs, and
transferring of jobs to markets overseas. Crime.
War. Health. Retirement. Our children's well-
being. Then, later, there are grandkids to worry
about.
Do you ever long for the day when the only fears
you have will be of imaginary lions, bears and
ghosts that live upstairs at your cousins' house?
I don't want to minimize anybody's fear about
anything. I certainly don't want anybody doing
that to me with the fears I try to manage! But one
thing I try to do is keep fear in perspective. And
to keep the objects of my fear in perspective.
I know things don't always turn out well. But I
know they usually do. And I know that, for one who
trusts in a power greater than anything that
threatens us, the things that cause us fear
diminish in size and power.
We can hold to the greatest words of hope and
comfort ever uttered: "My peace I leave with you;
my peace I give you ... Do not let your hearts be
troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14:27).
Jesus spoke those words. And they are more
powerful than any bear, lion or ghost lurking in
the shadows of my old house.
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