John Henry Faulk tells the story of gathering eggs at his grandmother's house when he was nine years old. Encountering a chicken snake, he and his cousin scrambled over each other trying to get out of the henhouse, each winding up considerably worse for the wear. When his grandmother admonished him that a chicken snake wouldn't hurt him he replied, " Yes, but it can scare you so bad you can hurt yourself."Fear too often acts like a distorting window glass between me and reality, causing me to live out a fantasy of despair instead of God's true life of peace and joy. A good portion of the Bible is devoted to telling stories about how people reacted out of fear to what appeared to be real, instead of the actual reality as God had revealed it to them, with disastrous consequences.
Most of the time that I spend being unhappy is due more to what I fear than to what has really happened. My fear of suffering often causes me more pain that actually experiencing the pain I feared. There is energy and vitality in fighting the dragon. It's hiding in the cave waiting that's hard.
For me the good news of the Christian way is that I don't have to live ruled by fear.
There is a better, truer way, the steward's way. A steward is free because a steward understands the true relationships among him or her self, God, and creation. Acting out of the purity of that vision, the steward is free from fear, and free for joy. To quote an old movie title, "its a Good Life."
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