Fear

I was a preschool tyke.  Our small farmhouse didn’t have a nursery.  I was sleeping in my cot in my parents’ bedroom.

I had heard my father and uncles discussing the second World War.  My father had been conscripted for special service.  The topic was real to them.  I was subconsciously aware that convoys of army green spelled impending dread.

My parents taught us that war was evil.  We were forbidden to “play war.”  That evening I had been with rambunctious cousins.  We had played war.  Now, in the small hours of the morning, I lay half awake. The convoys of Jeeps and service trucks were approaching! My four-year-old heart pounded.  I was frozen.  I was too scared to even call my mother, sleeping less than 6 feet away.  Finally, I could keep silent no more.  I whimpered.  My mom came to my bed.

“The army is here, Mom!”  

My mother comforted me, “No, Donald, there is no army here.”

“Yes, Mom.  I can hear the motors of the trucks.  Mom, they are here!”  I was positive.  I was absolutely terrified.  Could Mom not hear the motors?

Then the light came on for Mom.  “Donald, what you hear is your father snoring!”

Fear.  It is a play of imagination, injected with a small element of truth.  That, together with a little act of disobedience, causes our hearts to be gripped with terror.

“Perfect love casts out fear.”

Jesus is perfect love.

The Sin of Omission

It isn’t the thing you do, dear,

It’s the thing you leave undone

That gives you a bit of a heartache

At the setting of the sun.

The tender word forgotten;

The letter you did not write;

The flowers you did not send, dear,

Are your haunting ghosts at night.

The stone you might have lifted

Out of a brother’s way;

The bit of heartsome counsel

You were hurried too much to say;

The loving touch of the hand, dear,

The gentle, winning tone

Which you had no time nor thought for

With troubles enough of your own.

These little acts of kindness

So easily out of mind,

Those chances to be angels

Which we poor mortals find–

They come in night and silence,

Each sad, reproachful wraith,

When hope is faint and flagging

And a chill has fallen on faith.

For life is all too short, dear,

And sorrow is all too great,

To suffer our slow compassion

That tarries until too late;

And it isn’t the things you do, dear,

It’s the thing you leave undone

Which gives you a bit of a heartache

At the setting of the sun.

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

You may question what correlation the poem has with the above story.  In this poem, Margaret Sangster wished to encourage us to find the joy of service. 

Often when fear is coupled with the truth of yesterday’s shortcomings or failings, we are paralyzed into inaction.