Saturday, September 14, 2019

"be the love, that fear flees...."


"fear is a liar..."

Zach Williams'  "Fear is a Liar,"  is the perfect keynote for this very short post.

This morning, while listening for a divinely-guided sense of purpose in my day, it was this short statement that rose from silence:


"be the love,
that fear flees..."

That was it. As short and simple as a message could be. But it was enough. Love always is. Love isn't asking us to battle with fear. Love is asking us to trust Its Scriptural promise that:


"there is no fear
in love, but perfect love
casts out fear..."

Love isn't a weapon we wield in the face of fear. Love is the presence that fear flees in the face of.

This Love is not a human endeavor. This Love is not an emotional magic trick that we pull out of our hearts. This Love is a power as irresistible and irrevocable as gravity.

It is trust. It is faith. It is the Truth in all truths. It is the infant's curled hand around the finger of the father humbled and weeping in the face of her first touch. It is the shelter dog wiggling like a puppy when he knows he is going "home."

This love is a yielding, not a working at something. This love is restful, it is not filled with human effort. And this true and undeniable love, starts with the realization that there is Something invisible and indivisible at work in the universe - and it is not our thinking about Love, it is Love itself.

Fear cannot oppose this Love. In its omnipresence, fear flees. Fear doesn't need to be chased out. It doesn't need to be battled against, wrestled with, or approached with trepidation. Wherever this Love walks, fear flees. And this Love walks in the dark cavernous places of our blindness, with as much confidence as it does in the light of our sacred sanctuaries. This Love knows no place where Its presence is not known, felt, and surrendered to in complete abject awe.

We think we are afraid of something - disease, anger, pain, lack.  For example:  "I am afraid of ______, and when ______ is eradicated, I will no longer be afraid."  We think that when this scary somethingness is reduced to rubble, kicked out of our bodies, replaced with a better version of reality -- we will no longer be afraid. We think that fear is the result of something bad being present in our lives.  Get rid of the something and fear will go away.  Not true.

Fear is not an effect.  It is not the outcome - or result - of disease, lack, hatred, conflict, disaster. Fear is at their root.  But like the weed that it is, its root is benign, surface, easily kicked up from the dustbowl of its nothingness.  It may produce a large head of tumbleweed - but it has no hold.  The cultivation of the heart's rich soil releases it. And with Love's sure release, the dandelion heads of disease, lack, etc. are reduced to their native nothingness.

When we are so transfixed and deeply in love with our one first and true Love - God, fear slinks away. It has no voice, no threat, no power to disturb the heart that rests in the arms of the one Love that it knows nothing can separate it from.

offered with Love,


Cate 

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