The older I get, the more attempt, with greater success, I mitigate the possibility of terrible outcome. Exercising greater and increased wisdom, I realize this body grows increasingly brittle, this life and living also. A younger lad, discovering my fear of heights while working on swaying, bouncing, rattling scaffolding outside a four story building, I needed to make a choice, not work, let my fear negatively affect my safety by overwhelming me, causing me to do something that would lead to terrible outcome, or to trust those who constructed the scaffolding, and the seemingly narrow, worn, bouncy 2 x 12 planks I walked and worked on. I watched my colleagues, either confident with these surroundings, or doing a better job than I in hiding their fear, work seemingly unaffected by that which consumed my thoughts, what to do if a board broke, or the seemingly rickety scaffolding gave way. My worst fear never appeared.
Throughout life since, I have had opportunity to confront this fear of heights. Moving toward the edge of escarpments while backpacking in the Eastern Sierras, working on other buildings on scaffolding, even taking up rock climbing as the Boy Scout Troop I led was fortunate to have experts show us the way to safely execute the sport. Redundancy, careful placement of well maintained and designed equipment took most of the risk out of scaling and belaying rock faces and escarpments. The more we met success, the greater my confidence grew, my fear of heights tempered, all but disappearing. In fact, as you can see in the photograph above, I seem to enjoy the slaying of my fear of heights.
Today, I propose a different track than you might embark, if you had not read this blog; facing fear offset with trust. Many of those I engage in conversation seem more fearful than ever, wondering if our government will make things better, or not. Deliberating what will happen to our nation should our leaders continue down the slippery slope of overspending, bigger government, healthcare for the masses and more taxes. Some of my friends are fearful because they have lost their jobs and their homes, have a spouse who walked out of their lives, or a dear loved one being escorted by calamity or old age into eternity beyond this life. But there are also many of my friends who, in the same situations, do not walk in fear. Sure, the ground is flaky and crumbling; the cliff seems impossible to scale, the future they had planned unsure, but they walk far differently than those enrobed, entrapped in fear.
I have found many, like myself, who have developed legitimate trust; Who, now finding themselves standing on the rock face, at significant elevation realizing they were led there by God, allowing Him to assure our footing and security not in the apparent dangers surrounding us, but rather in the lifeline that will keep us from ruin and demise. Okay, we will meet our ultimate demise some day, sometime. We will also collide with near disaster and dissolution of our plans. But for many of us, we have mitigated our loss, being assured of eternal contentment without fear.
The reality is we have a lifeline through Jesus; a real man, really God, who really sacrificed His life for ours, giving us full access to relationship with God. It may seem easy, exchanging our trust in this world with instilling trust in the perfect God/man whose character none has yet defamed. But if it is so easy, why don't more do so? Does it seem too risky? Would you rather trust in the wisdom of man? Or the wisdom of a supremely compassionate, absolutely powerful, divinely sacrificial, morally uncorruptable God? Doing so has moved this heart from fear to faith, from frozen fright, to releasing refuge as part of God's divine kingdom with His divine plan, taking me on my divine journey, on this stroll leaving these footprints of faith unencumbered, enrobed, en-rapped not with fear, with peace
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