“Mom,” Elliot told my wife about a year ago. “I’m afraid!”
“Afraid of what?” She
asked him. There wasn’t anything particularly
going on to generate fear.
“Of wallpaper!” He
returned in a very concerned voice.
“Wallpaper?” Elaine
asked. This was a fear that we hadn’t
dealt with before and certainly didn’t seem to be the sort of thing that would
show up on many lists of top ten things folks are afraid of. At eight years of age, it wasn’t as though he
had read the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” either.
“Yes, wallpaper!” And
then it all came out. “I was reading in a
book about deadly things and wallpaper was in it! It has all kinds of toxic things in it, like arsenic
and mercury and when it gets too warm, those get into the air and it can kill
people!”
“But we don’t have wallpaper,” I put in.
“But what if we get some?”
“I don’t think we will,” I said. “But regardless, I think the book you were
reading was talking about a time over a hundred years ago. Wallpaper that you get at Home Depot these
days actually has minimal amounts of arsenic, lead, and mercury in it. They really couldn't sell it in this country if it had all that stuff in it.”
Elliot has grown up quite a bit since that time and he isn’t
afraid of wallpaper anymore. I don't think I can blame him for his fears. It
is a human tendency to be afraid of things – many of them fairly foolish. Fear is simply not a rational emotion.
Recently, I have been reading my way through the book of
Isaiah and I came to chapter 8, verses 12 and 13. It says, “Do not say, ‘A conspiracy,’
concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats,
nor be troubled. The Lord of hosts, Him
you shall hallow and let Him be your dread.”
It really feels like a passage written for our time. Isaiah was writing at a time when the tiny nation
of Judah was being invaded by the countries of Syria and Israel. We do not know what conspiracies he was
talking about, but the specifics of what was going on wasn’t what was
important. The people felt threatened and had little trust in their government to protect them.
There were two things that were important. First of all, God’s people were afraid of the
wrong thing. The second thing was that
the solution for their fear was to find their sanctuary in God.
It feels like these days Christians have gotten side
tracked. Many have gotten the impression
that the kingdom of God was to be ushered in via the political process of the
United States and when that didn't happen, they have fallen back on
anger and fear and conspiracies.
I am no prophet.
Maybe the United States is on its way for communism. Maybe Google and Facebook will destroy life
as we know it. Maybe radical groups will
dominate the future. (I'm optimistic that none of these things will come to pass). None of that
would change the mission that Jesus set before us.
Our goal, our ministry, is to go into the all the world and
share the Gospel – to live the Gospel – in such a way that no one questions
who we are serving.
As we focus on that mission, our concern with conspiracies
and our fear of the future will slip away.
A heart that has its refuge in God will not live in fear, regardless of
the sorts of times in which it finds itself.
I find it a blessing that God has promised to give us
strength to overcome our fears – even a dread of wallpaper.
