Frightened People

“The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.” —Oswald Chambers

Many people want us to fear what they fear—GMO’s, contrails, immigrants, politicians, global warming, mass extinctions, fluoridated water, FEMA camps, rogue planets, the timing of Jesus’ return—the usual stuff.

Are you afraid?

The Bible assures God’s kids that they’re the most secure people in all time and eternity—even when the sky falls. When we invest in the knowledge of threats—real or imagined—life on earth becomes fleeting and dangerous. Fearing God or fearing all the rest? Both are just symptoms of where we’ve placed our security.

Blessings.

—j

Stronger than Coffee

Oruel, a fictional pagan in C.S. Lewis’ book, Till We Have Faces, lashed out at the gods for their fickleness…

“I say the gods deal very un-rightly with us. For they will neither…go away and leave us to live our own short days to ourselves, nor will they show themselves openly and tell us what they would have us do. For that too would be endurable. But to hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper words we cannot understand in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another; what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman’s buff, and mere jugglery? Why must holy places be dark places?”

I have sometimes felt the same way about God. I’m glad He’s not that way. Alistair Maclean knew it, too…

“As the rain hides the stars, as the autumn mist hides the hills, happenings of my lot hide the shining of Thy face from me. Yet, if I may hold Thy hand in the darkness, it is enough; since I know that, though I may stumble in my going, Thou dost not fall.”

He is good and He is strong. Stronger than coffee. Stronger than anything.

Hang on.

—j