Love Notes

by Bill Love

The prophet Isaiah records God’s saying: I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.... Because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you. ... I am with you. The angel says to Mary, You have found favor with God. And to the shepherds, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall come to all the people, for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

I think I focused on the comfort in these words, the good news in these words.

Then I noticed what precedes each of these statements as well as many others. Fear not. Do not be afraid. And I began to wonder why God keeps telling us not to be afraid.

When I was a teenager and was going to be out later than I had told Mother and Daddy that I would be, before the time I’d given them came, I would call home to let them know and the first words I’d say were, I’m okay, and then explain. It kept them from fearing something bad had happened.

I think it’s more than that.

In the calming of the storm at sea, if the sequence were the storm, the fear of the disciples, and the calming of the storm, we’d have a nice story that might help us if we were caught in a storm at sea, which hasn’t happened to me very often. Okay, never. The sequence, however, is the storm, the calming of the storm, and the fear of the disciples. After Jesus has calmed the storm, he asks the disciples, Why are you afraid? Not, why were you afraid?

I think the storm they were afraid of then was not the physical storm Jesus had just calmed but the spiritual one brewing within each of them. And I concluded that the reason that the announcement begins Fear not is that we are already afraid, at times even terrified, almost always anxious. Then and now.

What this fear does to us is described in contemporary ways from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the anatomy of the brain. The more anxious and fearful we are the more we operate at a lower, more immature, more basic level. The long term results include illnesses related to lifestyle.

The Christmas announcements give us a reason not to be afraid, that a Savior is given to us. I’m not sure that good news or the good news that we are precious to God and loved gets through to our fear. That is God’s Christmas wish for you and for me. Do not be afraid.

And the first epistle of John tells us there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

[See also Voices, by Vic Jameson.]