lent 3 fear

Just before Ben got into his bed last night a very tiny mouse ran out from under a cupboard in the hall, crossed the landing and right in front of Ben and Josh and I who happened to be standing there, scurried across Ben's bedroom floor and disappeared under his bed.

The mouse was probably no bigger than my thumb, head to tail.  Tiny and undoubtably terrified of all of us.  But you would have thought a T Rex had entered the room by Ben's reaction.  He squealed and refused to go to bed and came and hid in my room.  He didn't want any harm to come to the mouse of course.  He just didn't want it under his bed all night.  He was scared.

I know that some of you reading this will be with Ben.  You'd be terrified of a mouse in the house. Or a spider.  Or a bird or a wasp.  Some will even be freaked out at the picture of the mouse above.  And depsite the fact that you know that the mouse and the spider and the rest are all tiny and not in the slightest bit dangerous ( unless you are severely allergic to wasp stings ) you can't help that sense of rising panic when that thing you fear is present.

I was in a nursery on Monday with some children who were all under 2 years old.  We were singing songs and talking about birds.  I showed them pictures and we played instruments and quacked and tweeted and flew round the room.  And then I got out my tweeting birds which make birdsong when you squeeze them.  Sparrows and thrushes - from the RSPB so reasonably realistic.  Ive given the birds to dozens of children this past week and they all love them and are fascinated by the tweeting.  But on Monday one 18 month old child reacted with terror when I passed him a bird.  He physically moved away, screwed up his face and refused to touch it.   He was scared.   And I was really surprised.  Where did that fear come from?  In a room where everyone else was enjoying the birds and quite clearly there was nothing to fear.  I cant believe it was a learned behaviour at that age.  So what was it?   This sort of thing fascinates me

It seems to me that fear is a major factor in much of what is wrong in the world today.  And it is around us and seeping into us from a young age.   If we fear our neighbour because he is different from us we are more likely to discriminate, bully, exclude and fight against him.  If we fear that most people are bad people we wont let our children go out to play.  If we are scared of being judged by others we will become paralysed by perfectionism and low self esteem.   Fear is like a cancer which spreads quickly and with deadly effect.  Fear whispers ' what if?' and then lists all the deadly ( but highly improbable) possibilities.  Fear takes things out of context and blows things out of proportion.   It so easily gets a grip on us, and once it has it is very difficult to get free from.

How much mental illness has its roots in fear?   We might not call it fear, we might call it anxiety or panic attacks or phobias or stress.  Fear robs us of life in all its fullness. It is an enemy.  It is a spiritual thing.  I firmly believe that therapy and medication and logic can only deal with the symptoms of fear and that the only way to be really free from our fears is to speak the truth over ourselves.  It is the truth which sets us free.

The truth is that we are not slaves to fear.  The truth is that over and over again in the Bible God commands us ' Do not fear' .    The truth is that ' The Lord is with me: I will not fear' ( Ps 118 6-7)  We can choose to agree with fear and allow it to cripple us and stop us from being the people God has called us to be.  Or we can make the choice to step out from underneath the domain and dominion of fear and back into the place of freedom Jesus has bought for us.  In the presence of the living God there is no fear..... just a reverence and an awe at the realisation that He who is in us is SO much bigger than he who is in the world that we really do have nothing, nothing, nothing to fear.