A Thought For The Week Of May 22, 2017

"Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken." (Psalm 55:22) I'm writing this just a couple of days after the terrorist attack in Manchester, England, that killed at least 22 people - most likely teenagers and at least one who was only eight years old. It's a shocking thing. It's impossible to understand. There are truly no words that can properly express the horror we feel at such an act of ruthless violence directed toward innocent children. And it's called "terrorism" for a reason. Its goal is to spread fear and terror into the hearts and souls of people, and to blind them to qualities such as love and compassion and mercy. Terrorism wins when we choose to live in fear and to look around every corner for those we think we should be afraid of. And when that happens, the next step is hatred. We start to lash out - we blame "them;" whomever "they" may be. Already in Manchester, for example, there's a report of an arsonist having set fire to the city's main mosque. Not because anyone at the mosque had anything to do with the attack, but because of hatred caused by irrational fear. We're afraid that something like this might happen to us or to those we love. And fear can cause us to set rationality aside. No wonder Jesus said "do not be afraid." He understood the problem. Those who are afraid will never listen to God. They'll be too busy either cowering or taking irrational vengeance on those who have never harmed them. I once read that a psychological had estimated that 90% of the things we worry about and fear either never happen or are things we can't do anything about. The basic message, then, is that worry and fear solve very little and create a lot more trouble. Wouldn't it be great to just let go of 90% of our worries and fears? But, of course, there would still be the other 10%. What about that relatively small handful of our worries that actually are worth worrying about? What about the things we really should be afraid of? This, I suspect, is where faith is tested. Do we actually trust God to care for us? Do we actually believe that God loves us? Do we take seriously the idea that God can, in some way, intervene directly and personally in our lives? This verse from Psalm 55 promises us that if we do take these things seriously then we will, indeed, never be shaken. It's important to understand that the Psalm never promises us that the things we worry about will never happen. Bad and even tragic things are a part of life - and they happen to someone, somewhere every day and faith doesn't protect us from them. What faith does, though, is remind us that for all the sin and violence and evil we see around us - and even in spite of the bad things that sometimes happen to us personally - there is one who is more powerful than all the things that can happen to us in life. We trust God to triumph over all that frightens us and can easily lead us to hatred. "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest," Jesus said.