Monday 6 April 2009

This week we will spend time in the last section of "The Strength to Love" - Antidotes for Fear, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

In these days of catastrophic change and calamitous uncertainty, is there any man who does not experience the depression and bewilderment of crippling fear, which, like a nagging hound of hell, pursues our every footstep?

This makes fear sound like something after us...something that will not let us rest. Within the normal stuff of the day, we all experience those moments when fear attempts to prick us so that we will turn our heads and wonder what will come next. It is in those brief moments that we decide what will lead us - fear or not. I was going to write fear or courage but wasn't sure that was the word to use in opposition to fear. And yet, it is. In the face of that which threatens us we are, as followers of Jesus, invited to engage a courage to be the beloved that we are. That means resistance against fears that attempt to rule our lives. It also means taking the time and being vulnerable to those around us so that the powers that are used to create fear can be met with others alongside. In Sunday school today, we watched a video call "American Prophet." It was about William Sloan Coffin. I always marvel at such people. They stand in the way of evil and though they may fear, they keep standing because they trust the God who has given them life. If God has given us our lives, no one has the right to treat our life as though it is worth-less than others or that it is something that can be sacrificed for the well-being of a few. People like Coffin are remembered for being out front and standing for a vision for life that creates peace and standing against the powers of death in their many shapes. Sometimes, it take more than one person to make any of us courageous. We learn to stand in hope and challenge the ways of the world when we see others who have gone there before us or are willing to stand alongside us in order to face our fears.

Connection: What leads you down a path of courage? First don't think too grand. Think very basic. Think very contextual. Start there and capture what is going on at those moments when you are able to walk through even the smallest fear.

Lord God of Vision and Hopefulness, be our sustaining power of life that walks us through all that we fear. That walk is one unknown except that we know that you are eternally with us. That may be all we need remember. Amen.