Fear Not

I don’t feel like I am consumed by fear, but I do think I fear things every day.  I fear rejection from clients and friends.  I fear downturns in business.  I fear bad health and getting old.  In Matthew 10, Jesus is preparing his disciples for what they can expect to face as they attempt to follow him.  He didn’t warn them about bad health or aging. Among other things, he told them to expect to be flogged.  I had a general idea of what flogging was, but just to make sure, I did a quick internet search, and here is what I came up with:  “to torture with a whip of broken glass and with a metal ball with two metal hooks at its end.”  That has to be one of the most gruesome descriptions of pain that I have ever heard, and do you know what Jesus told his disciples after he told them to expect to be flogged.  “Fear not”  Are you serious?  

I hadn’t read that passage in a while, but a friend reminded me of it last week.  She had meditated on it in her quiet time and recorded it in her journal.  She shared it with me through her husband and her pastor, who read it at her funeral last week.  You see, cancer had crippled her body, but her soul was fully alive and fully aware of the fullness of God.  And she let us know it every day by the way she treated us.  So she didn’t just write the words “fear not” in her journal - she lived them.  Thank you, Cheryl, for showing me Jesus through your life. (See last week’s post for more about Cheryl.)