“The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy.”
Psalm 147:11 KJV
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this story. Like Pastor always says, ‘confession is good for the soul, but it’s bad for the reputation.’ Anyway, when I was about 10-12 years old, growing up in Alabama, I was a Girl Scout, like most young girls that age. My friends and I would gather together and walk to our meetings where we would do arts and crafts, and learn about being productive young women. It was loads of fun, and I enjoyed it.
But one day, while walking home from a meeting with my friends, like we had done so many times before, there was a stray kitten on the side of the road. My friends knew that I was afraid of cats, and they picked up the kitten and threw it on my back. The more I tried to get away from it, the more it clung to me- we were both afraid. And to this day I am afraid of cats. I don’t like them and they know it. It’s so bad that I can’t watch a cat commercial on TV, and I learned later in life that the fear of cats is a real phobia for lots of people, and it has a name. Ailurophobe.
When my daughter was small she wanted a kitten and her dad told her my story, trying to convince her that getting a pet kitten was not a good idea because mommy was afraid of cats, and when he asked her which would she rather have, the kitten or mommy? She would always say, “The cat.” Thankfully, we never got one and she learned to love me instead.
We live in a world today where there’s lots to fear. Crime is running rampant. Racism is an ever-present dread. Earthquakes. Tornadoes. Car-Accidents. Death. The Police. The loss of a job. These in no way compare to my fear of cats but nevertheless, they have the tendency to immobilize us. Every culture seems to be afraid of something. Even in Biblical times, the Hebrews feared the Romans because of the ruthless might of their occupation troops. Eventually, those fears were realized as Rome viciously destroyed Jerusalem in A.D.70.
While we fear those things that threaten our well-being, and our safety there is a right kind of fear. According to Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” This is not a fawning, cringing dread that keeps us wallowing in anxiety but a respect for who God is. Proverbs 1:7b says, “but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” When we fail to seek God and to get His perspective we allow our fears to dominate us. It’s like me squirming to get away from the cat, and him clinging to me because of his own fear.
When we have a balanced view of God it puts our fears in the right perspective. The Right Kind of fear demands that we view everything and everybody in relation to God’s holiness. When Gabriel appeared to Mary in Nazareth with a startling announcement- that she would soon bear the very Son of the Highest- it meant the end to life as she knew it. Faced with the ruinous prospects that she had neither caused nor sought, Mary had plenty of reason to balk at Gabriel’s message, but instead, she accepted her assignment.