Fearless

When I watch my son play, I imagine a future of X game tournaments, filled with bikes flying high and flipping over 8 times while on a snowboard. This week, I watched him make a ramp out of books in an attempt to climb onto the living room table and had to grab him before he crawled over the arm of the couch, to get on the air conditioner. He also realized he could climb onto the foot rest of his stroller and throw himself inside. Every stunt begins almost the same: He looks around for my husband or I, creates his method and then he goes for it. Most of the time he falls or gets taken down before he has the opportunity to achieve his goal, but he gets right back up and tries again. When I see his stunts, I always wonder if this will be the time we end up going to the emergency room, but his laughter says he'll be just fine.

There are times, though, when my little daredevil isn't so fearless. It generally happens between 12:30 and 3:30 am, when I hear through the monitor a panicked whimpering. It quickly transitions to insistent crying, as if to yell into the darkness, "Mama! Dada! Where are you??" The last thing our son remembers at the end of any day is falling asleep in our arms, and when he doesn't wake up there, it's almost like he can't even process our absence. Tonight, he was so upset when he woke up, that when I tried to hold him in my lap, he tried to throw himself on the floor. All I could think to do was put on his favorite music, Bob Marley, and walk him around the room. After rubbing his eyes into my shoulder, he eventually shifted downward, and with the sound of my heart beating in his ear, he fell asleep on my chest by the end of "No woman, no cry."

God told his people not to fear, and it was always with the caveat, "For I am with you." (Isaiah 41:10) I'm finding that fearlessness is only something we can achieve if there is something greater than what we fear with us. I've been reminded of the story of Daniel, when he was put in the lions den. King Darius came to him and said, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" The next morning, after a restless night, the king ran to the lion's den and in an "anguished voice" cried out, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?!" (Daniel 6) Even a pagan king, like Darius, who had decreed that he would be the only entity within the kingdom that would be prayed to for 30 days understood that lions were less fearful than the God Daniel served. This situation is exactly what John was trying to illustrate when he said, "Greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world." (1 John 4:4)

I imagine Daniel was still terrified. Fear is usually legitimate when faced with hungry lions. What if God didn't come through? I think that's a question we all ask, and so did many others throughout the bible. Right now, my church is doing a series called, "Leap of Faith," where we're supposed to very specifically ask God for something big that's on our heart. If I was going to be honest, I hate stuff like this. There is such fear in the risk of jumping and not being caught, or hitting a few cliffs along the way. What if I ask for help, like Daniel did, and end up being fed to lions? Will God protect me? Will God let me get eaten? How do I know for sure? If I was Daniel, I probably just wouldn't have outwardly prayed for a month, and believed God would understand. Approaching this series fills me with not only fear, but absolute dread. It's no wonder God says he doesn't give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind, (2 Tim 1:7) when you think about what fear does to you. Fear makes you feel powerless, angry, sometimes to a volatile point, and paranoid. Nothing has even happened yet, and this fear has already convinced me that God isn't going to change our circumstances and I'm already angry about how my faithlessness is going to be exposed.

The church has very neatly wrapped up this crisis with saying at the end of the Lenten season, by doing Leap of Faith, we will, at the very least, have spent more time in God's presence, and established a greater connection. We'll get him, and that will be enough. I again, think about my little one, and how sometimes, all he wants is me, and that's enough to drive his fears away. I think of how the fears get bigger as he does, and some day soon, I'll be trying to convince him that there's nothing in his closet, or under his bed. I wonder how I will reassure him, and I find myself leading him to the same place our church is attempting to lead me, to the feet of Jesus; Promising that there's nothing in existence bigger than Jesus, and that Jesus lives in us, so we have no reason to be afraid. How can I encourage my son to face his lion's den and cliff face if I won't do the same? I guess it means I have to leap.

("Leap of Faith," Ben Templin, Wolf Tribe Photography, NJ. Used with permission)