Fear Transformed

I guess you can call this my Throw Back Advent Series! I decided to open the archives and share my Advent devotionals from some previous seasons. I wrote this for Christmas 2011. I can see where it reveals my heart at this time two years ago. I was feeling a bit lost, damaged, injured, and alone. Thanks be to God for giving me hope in my need and for providing so richly for me, especially in the past year. More on that to come...

Psalm 27.1-4
The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?  When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.  Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.  One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

We live in a world with much to fear. People are unpredictable. They can careen into us damaging our bodies and our hearts. The earth is chaotic. It can shake us to the core and produce heat, wind, ice, and rain that threatens our very lives as well as those possessions which we have stored in its temporary shelter. Economic turmoil challenges us at every turn while acts of terrorism and war rip at the fiber of our societies.

We live and breathe and have our being by the very grace of the One who created both this terrestrial ball and those of us who call it home. We may seem bent on our own destruction and that of the planet; however that One, that Creator, is a God who loves not only the natural world that He spoke into being, but also the violent, foolish, broken, and flawed humans into whom He placed His very image. His love is so powerful, transformative, and other-worldly that He inexplicably chose to enter human history in the form of a helpless infant.

And, it is through that infant that all fear can cease and and in whom all confidence can be placed. An infant delivered light into the vast darkness of our hearts and salvation to all that exists. That moment in history transformed all future moments into beauty, peace, and hope.

Thanks be to the One for whom all things have been created and in whom all things hold together.