WHEN WE ARE AFRAID.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHEN WE ARE AFRAID.

ALL THINGS MADE PLAIN. Here are two helpful extracts bearing on fear. The first is from an article in a recent number of the "War Cry" (London). Tlio other is from a sermon preached a few weeks ago by an English Congregational minister: — "What time I am afraid," declares the Psalmist, "I will trust in Thee." David does not exclude the possibility of his being afraid on occasions. During tho war-time air-raids I found it very difficult to believe the people who declared that they were not afraid. Fear is a natural propensity, btit like other human tendencies, it need not gain dominion over us. Fear hath torment! How well we know it. Wo frequently sing, "Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain wo bear," and that is truo of the unnecessary torture we have undergone in fearful contemplation of some expected ordeal which has turned out to bo not so bad after all. How we have agonised over somo expected blow which has never fallen! But some measure of fear in some rircumetanocs is understandable. The dread of protracted sickness, entailing loss of employment; of a period of intense loneliness or of a threatened operation seems very human. Jesus recognised this and sought to allay fear wherever he met it. "Why are ye fearful?" was a question very often on Hi 3 lips. I think we are afraid because of our human inability to weave together the various strands which go to make up our lives. Wo cannot connect isolated events with the great pattern which is being worked out under the direction of our all-wise Creator. Were we but to rest in His love and trust to His wisdom, He would, in His own good time, make all plain to us. Tho Psalmist speaks as & wise man ■when he says he will trust when he is afraid, but Isaiah goes further and deeper when he avows that he will trust and not be afraid. Many of us go as far as David, but we have not yet reached the prophet's experience. Of Larger Magnitude. The second sermon, in part, is as follows: — In the last year of the war, when the Germans made their terrible thrust, those of us who had seen but a part of the lines, how thin they were, how apparently defenceless, were afraid. But I was shown a map which restored my confidence. It gave a wider view of the disputed ground, showing a mass of hill-country on which our troops were falling hack. Things that had been hidden were revealed, and it was as if a voice said "Fear not." It is something like this that Jesus does for His disciples. Ho revises and enlarges our map of life, setting our experience in a new perspective. Some event falls upon us like the thrust of Fate, bringing loss, injury, or humiliation. It seems so big, so overwhelming, until it is lined up with things of larger magnitude, like character, friendship or the Kingdom of God. Then it does not seem so big. So it was with the apostle when he dreaded the loneliness of Corinth until a vision uncovered for a moment the real situation and a voice said: "Be not afraid." When things are desperate and the grounds of hope are nearly erased, consult the map of life revealed in Jesus Christ, and it will he a spring of new .courage.