Banishing All Fears
I do not know about you all, but there seems to be plenty of things for a mom and dad to be fearful of these days: Muslim Jihadist plots to bomb airplanes, threats of thermonuclear attacks, rumors of World War III, a possible pandemic of bird flu, and more that my brainhas deliberately suppressed.
The news programs fill one’s mind with images of radiation sickness and victims of terrorist bombings. The worst one for me: Rows and rows of tiny coffins of children struck down by the 1918 pandemic flu, along with dire predictions of the worst flu to come most likely next year, if we escape it this year.
One of my tactics for dealing with this as a mom is simply to avoid all mention of these kinds of news stories. I change the channel, turn to the next page of the newspaper, flip off the radio, and just pray it will not happen.
But when I lie down to sleep at night, the images and thoughts come crowding back in.
How could I bear it, I think to myself, to watch one of my children get sick and die of bird flu while I watched, helpless to do anything to prevent it?
Then I remember a favorite story of Elisabeth Elliot tells about Corrie ten Boom. Corrie was a young girl, she was fearful of many things. Her father said, “Corrie, when we take a ride on the train, when do I give you your ticket?”
“Well, right before I board the train, papa.”
“That’s right Corry, because you do not need it before then, do you?”
Corry’s father explained to her that in just that way, your heavenly father takes care of you. Elisabeth Eliot went on to say that God does not give you grace to cover your imagined fears for the future. He gives you grace when you need it. God gives a never-ending supply to meet our need for each moment.
The verses on the cover of this month’s Espirit were the verses that Corrie’s papa asked to be read aloud the night the ten Boom family was arrested and was taken to the police station in Haarlem, the Netherlands, under charges of harboring fugitive Jews, often a capital offence during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
As Corry says in her book, Prison Letters, “from that moment forward, everything in our lives was changed. We did not know what was ahead of us, but I was certain of one thing — that Jesus would never leave us or forsake us, and that, for a child of God, no pit could be so deep that Jesus Christ was not deeper still.”
The image the Bible gives us of God as mother bird sheltering her young is such a beautiful one. In his book The Birds Our Teachers, John Stott describes this kind of protection.
“It (the example of a mother bird caring for her young) occurs at least six times in some of the great Psalms of personal devotion. First, it comes as a statement of joyful confidence: ‘Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings,’ Psalm 63:7. Next it expresses an aspiration (‘I long to ... take refuge in the shelter of your wings,’ Psalm 61:4), a determination (‘I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings,’ Psalm 57:1), and a prayer (‘hide me in the shadow of your wings,’ Psalm 17:8). But it is more than a statement of individual commitment; for God’s steadfast love binds him to all the people of his covenant, whatever their social status may be; ‘How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings,’ Psalm 36:7)”
There is great comfort indeed in the knowledge that just as I want to shelter and protect my young ones, so God wants to do with me.
The new school year stretches ahead of us. Perhaps my most pressing fear is not global catastrophe, but it is the feeling of terror when I look at my schedule with all of my children’s outside classes and activities. I fear I will be spending the lion’s share of my life behind the wheel of our family van!
Once again I remind myself He knows my frame in all the cracks in my pot. His grace is sufficient, he is able to direct us to walk in his ways. We can walk forward into each new day with confidence that overcomes our fears. All glory to him who gathers us into His everlasting arms!
—JMT
