There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear. (1 John 4:18)
MANY OF US WORRY about things that almost never kill anyone. Many people are “deathly” afraid of snakes, but only two Americans die from snakebite in any given year. You won’t catch millions of people daring to skydive; after all, twenty-two people die every year from skydiving accidents, according to a Time magazine article. Yet more than twice that many die of lightning strikes and three times that number die from bee or wasp stings. More than three hundred die annually from bathtub drowning, and nearly twice that number die from falling out of bed.
By now you’re probably convinced that you should be afraid of getting out of bed in the morning. In fact, Florence was so afraid of dying that she went to bed and stayed there. For fifty-three years! She told friends that her life hung by a thread. She was afraid it would snap at any moment. And finally her prediction came true and she died. At the age of ninety!
Yet for three years of her life she braved the threat of death in a very dangerous situation—the Crimean War. Florence Nightingale tended wounded soldiers and was known as “The Lady with the Lamp” because she made her rounds at night.
Many of us fear because we have forgotten that God, who loves us, has promised to watch over us. “Perfect love drives out fear.”
Put your trust in the One who often says, “Fear not.”
Ron McClung works at his denomination’s world headquarters and lives in Fishers, Indiana, with his wife, Carol. They have two sons and nine grandchildren.
