Scared and Safe
A very recent Meditation from Fr. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations sums up what I now know to be real though I did not then! It says: “…the Bible says “Do not be afraid” almost 150 times! . . . CAC teacher James Finley shares how Jesus is a model of how to say Yes in the midst of our deepest fear: In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweat blood because he was afraid [Luke 22:44]. It is possible that he was infinitely more afraid than we could ever be.
But the difference is: Jesus was not afraid of being afraid, because he knew it was just fear. . . We are afraid of fear because we believe that it has the power to name who we are, and it fills us with shame. . . Jesus invites us to discover that our fear is woven into God’s own life, whose life is mysteriously woven into all the scary things that can and do happen to us as human beings together on this earth. This is liberation from fear in the midst of a fearful situation.”