Our Deadly Fear
There are many different fears in this world. Words such as acrophobia, nyctophobia, claustrophobia, cleithrophobia, all deal with fear, and there are many other names and types of fear.
We have been hit this year by one fear after another. I don’t know what the name would be for the fear, or fears, we have endured this year. We have a hyped-up virus that because of the news reports has been made into a gigantic monster.
I don’t make light of something that for some people is deadly. Somehow we lived in a world so long that we believe we can cure and control the force of life and death that we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking we will cheat death.
Stay home, don’t go to church don’t go shopping, don’t have Thanksgiving or Christmas…the list goes on and on. Some states are telling people they must wear masks in their own homes if they have visitors in.
I have been going to a salon to have my hair washed. Starting last week we needed to wear masks according to our governor’s decision. I’ve lived over an average number of years. I’ve astounded even myself that with the number of dumb things I’ve done in those years I’m still here.
In some manner, it should be possible to impress on people that our lives here are short even at the longest. When compared to eternity fifty, one hundred, even two hundred years isn’t long, but we don’t see that. We see that our bodies grow older and eventually they will stop. As it says in Ecclesiastes 3:1 and following, ‘To everything, there is a season’.
So, there you have it. Life and death happen to us all but we pretend it does not and whether we live long or short we believe we have control over it. Eat right, diet, exercise, don’t smoke, don’t eat meat, don’t eat bread, get away from gluten…what a list.
I fear that no matter what you believed yesterday would save you it won’t make a real difference. Life isn’t about what you can’t control because we don’t really control this life. What seems to happen is people abandon the idea of being prepared for the next life thinking they can control the forever of this life. But there isn’t any forever in this life.
There has been a beginning and there will be an end.
The takeaway should be—folks stop. Stop living an aimless life wandering toward the end of your life being afraid to live because you’ve not taken care of the important details and you’re afraid to die.
Ecclesiastes 3:
1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. 11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
