What time I am afraid...

I remember the illustration still. A 1950s ink drawing of a little girl, knees pressed against the back cushions of the couch, eyes wide at the storm raging in the dark just outside her living room window. The image appeared at the heading of one of the family devotions in the book, Little Visits with God. It was a book we used with our children, just as my parents had used with me many years before.

That image, and the words of Psalm 56:3, played over and over in my mind as the events of last Wednesday, September 10, unfolded.

It was an overwhelmingly dark day. I awakened to the news of a young woman stabbed to death in a random act of violence aboard a North Carolina transit car. The image was both startling and gruesome. I wished I hadn't seen it. It sickened me.

Later that afternoon my social media feed was blowing up with news of the murder of Charlie Kirk, shot as he spoke and debated at a Utah college campus. As I scrolled the notifications another graphic, unsolicited image was seared into my brain. How I wished it would all stop. It was too much. Too dark. Too hateful. Too horrific.

As I shared the sad news with my grown kids on Messenger, one of my daughters informed us there had also been another school shooting that day in Colorado. I could no longer contain the tears. The brokenness of my heart in that moment matched the brokenness of this sin-sick world, and all I could do was weep for the state of it, for the lives taken, for the families shattered.

In that space between grief and anger, fear had also crept in. It wasn't fear for myself so much as it was a very real and gripping fear for the lives of my children and for the future of my precious grandchildren. It seemed that day that darkness was winning. Despair was reigning over me... but then God. Then God in the person of the Holy Spirit brought the verse from Psalm 56 to mind.

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in Thee. In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me? - Psalm 56:3-4

This world is an imperfect place. Sin permeates and corrupts everything good that God created. There is no escaping that this side of heaven. As broken-hearted as I was that day to witness just a fraction of the depravity and brutality humankind can do to one another, I thought about how much more it grieved the heart of the One who made us in His image, the One who created us for so. much. more. The One who sent His only Son into the midst of this depravity that we might be rescued and restored and one day live in peace and perfection with our heavenly Father, just as He always intended.

Fear will run rampant in our hearts if we let it, and frankly that is what the Prince of Darkness wants. He wants us to take our focus off Jesus and look around. He wants us to be fearful of the wind and the waves. He wants us to remember that we cannot control what lies beyond our scope and ability to do so, whether be it natural disasters, acts of terrorism, random violence, road rage, bullying, etc., etc., etc.

He wants us to flail and fret and do anything and everything except...

except TRUST in the One who actually holds our days in the palm of His almighty and most capable hand.

There is only one antidote for the fear that poisons us. It's trusting in Jesus. To trust Him is to turn our lives over completely to His control, to acknowledge that we can do nothing on our own without Him. Once we understand that, I mean really, truly grasp that we are His, that our days and our lives are in His hands, we can let go. Let go of that fear that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

This doesn't mean there will never again be anything in this fallen world that causes us to fear. What it means is that when a moment like that comes, we know Who we can run to, the One who loved us enough to die in our place, the One who casts out fear and replaces it with His perfect peace, the One who dispels the darkness with His marvelous light.

Fear can never reign in the heart where Jesus sits on the throne.