Afraid

December 8, 2015December 8, 2015 ~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

Chicken! What are you afraid of?

The raggedy collection of boys was gathered around, mostly sneering at the skinny kid with bare feet. He looked at their grinning faces as he ran his browned hand nervously through his short sun-bleached hair.

There was nothing to be seen there but derision and scorn. Not one of them thought he had it in him. He knew that. They were certain the terrified little squirt was about to run home to his mama.

Squaring his bony shoulders and taking a deep breath, he looked at the biggest one of the bunch.

“I’ll do it. I’ll show you. You think I’m afraid of that old man? What’s he gonna do—call the cops?

With that, he turned and ambled toward the little convenience store determinedly. The boys waited to see what would happen.

Moments later, with a triumphant grin on his face, the skinny kid exited the tiny store. Taking his sweet time, he sauntered up the street to where they waited under the hackberry tree.

They gathered around him again. “Well? Show us!” they demanded.

Slyly looking back toward the store, as if to be sure there were no eyes peering from the doorway, he reached in his pocket and drew out a box—a box—of wooden toothpicks.

The boys howled.

Toothpicks? You stole toothpicks? What a loser! First, you’re too chicken to go; then, you’re too stupid to steal something good.

The derision coming from all directions was too much. The little squirt ran home to his mama as fast as his bare feet would carry him.

What are you afraid of?

I want to tell you the answer is—nothing.

Nothing at all. I’m not afraid—period.

It’s a lie.

I do not believe anyone walks this earth who has no fears. Fears come with being human.

Danger breeds fear. It’s not an unhealthy thing.

Fear of pain keeps me from putting my hand into the flame of the fireplace. That’s good. Burns are not healthy. People die from severe burns. You know—infection and all kinds of nasty stuff happens.

Still, there are some fears we keep hidden. I not entirely happy about these fears. You see, I have friends who are fond to suggesting that fear is not pleasing to God. They quote Scripture to prove their point.

Give all of your anxiety to Him, because He cares for you (I Peter 5:7)

Perfect love casts out all fear. (I John 4:18)

I’m not saying they’re wrong. Fear that paralyzes is not healthy. Fear that overcomes us emotionally and physically yields disastrous results.

Perhaps, the problem is that we put all fear in the same basket. I’m assuming it’s not all the same. After all, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 1:7)

Fear then, can be useful. It teaches us to exercise care. It admonishes us to consider carefully our course of action.

But, fear can also be harmful. Sometimes it makes us curl up into a ball and let the world go by without us. Often it takes away the impetus for doing good for others.

So, we come back to the original question.

What are you afraid of?

I want it to be something noble. I want to tell you I’m afraid I won’t have enough time to accomplish great things. I want you to believe I’m afraid of not engaging people for Christ.

It’s true. Those are, indeed, some of the things about which I’m concerned. The problem is that most of the things I fear are not nearly so noble.

Not nearly.

Someone asked me the question today. They were being facetious. I (also facetiously) told them I was afraid of what people would think of me.

It’s not a thing to joke about. I am afraid of what people will think of me.

It is the reason the skinny boy who became a grown-up me went into that convenience store nearly fifty years ago—terror of what his peer group would think of him.

Sometimes though, the fear of what people think about me has a positive effect. It causes me to think about how God would have me live. Other times—not so much. In those times, my fear is for my reputation, my image.

Then again, I have other fears which nag—nothing more—at the edges of my consciousness. I fear being left alone, being left behind, and I want never to experience that reality. I’m afraid of crying in front of other people, especially my children and the Lovely Lady. Who wants to be seen as weak?

They’re not all that pretty, are they? Not all so noble. There are still a few I’m not yet ready to admit publicly.

I wonder if I’m the only one. Perhaps not.

Here is what I do know. God uses fearful men to accomplish His purposes.

Moses was terrified of talking. Simply talking. He rescued an entire nation.

The prophet Elijah ran terrified from an already defeated king and hid in a cave. God took Him to heaven in a chariot of fire.

Peter was full of bravado and brag, but he was afraid of the waves when He walked with Jesus on them. He was terrified of a serving girl outside the trial of his Savior, soon to be crucified. Yet, Peter became one of the founders of the Church as we know it today.

If we put our trust in Him, our God will turn our fears into actions which will yield good things in our lives. Not just for ourselves, but for God and mankind.

The skinny kid, afraid as he was of what his friends would think, pulled one over on them. The quarter he laid quietly on the counter as he slipped out of the convenience store more than covered the nineteen cent price tag for that silly box of toothpicks.

Fear works in more than one way.

Sometimes, it is the beginning of wisdom.

The beginning.

What are you afraid of?

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.
(2 Timothy 1:7 ~ NIV)

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.
(Aeschylus ~ Ancient Greek playwright ~ 525-426 BC)

Bars Made of String

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015 ~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

I was busy when he left the guitar.

“Give me a few weeks. I’ll see if I can figure out what’s causing that vibration.”

He nodded, but he was frowning gloomily. “It’s going to be bad. Probably a loose brace.”

The gloomy clouds didn’t follow him out the door as I hoped they would, but simply hung in the air over that guitar case. Or, so it seemed to me.

My few weeks passed. Then a few more went by. Every time I walked past the instruments waiting to be repaired, I could feel the gloom.

What if it’s a loose brace?

I shrugged off the gloom and continued on to other tasks. Again and again, I ignored the guitar case sitting there.

I didn’t open the case once. Not once.

He came in last week. “It’s been over two months. Have you fixed my guitar?”

The gloomy clouds came to hang over my own head—the one I was shaking in embarrassment.

“Sorry. Give me another week.”

Out the door he went again. I turned back to my work, worrying still.

What if it’s a loose brace? It might even be broken.

The week has passed. He called today. The instrument must be ready to pick up tomorrow. Tomorrow!

Tonight, the guitar lies on my work bench. Dreading what I will find, I reach down to loosen the strings. I can’t work inside the instrument until I get room to put my hands through the sound hole.

Like bars of steel, the strings guard the entrance. Perhaps I should just leave them alone.

What if it’s a loose brace?

Then a new thought strikes me. What if it’s not?

What if it’s something really simple? Easy to fix?

By now, I have loosened up the strings and, like a caged strong man in the movies, have spread them apart, bending them like—well—like string. I insert my mirror and, shining a light on it, begin my inspection.

Two months, I’ve waited. And worried.

Five minutes—no, less than that—three minutes later, I have found the problem. A broken string, fallen into the body of the guitar, has been trapped by the magnetic force of the electric pickup. Trapped against the sound board which magnifies every sound ten-fold.

The tiny buzz-buzz-buzz of the metallic string against the spruce sounded for all the world like a disastrous structural failure.

I whisk away the one-inch piece of bronze and stainless steel, breathing a sigh of relief as I do. Pulling my tools and my hand from the dungeon of my almost-failure, I let the bars—I mean, strings—spring back into place and I re-tune them.

Sitting on a nearby stool, I run my fingers over the strings, hitting a few familiar chords. What an astounding result! The tones radiating from the soundboard of the instrument are perfection itself.

Perfection. And, I waited over two months to experience it.

Afraid.

What if?

Two months—wasted.

All of my life, I have worried about what is behind those doors I have never passed through. All of my life.

Twelve years old. I was with my family in southern Kansas visiting my great-aunt and uncle. They had a farm in the gently rolling hills near the place my mother had grown up.

Uncle Paul was old, but he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be a kid. While the old folks were visiting, he warned us to beware of snakes and sent us out to explore anywhere we wanted to wander.

That was how we came to be standing in front of the doorway into the hillside. Anywhere we wanted, he had said. This door looked interesting. And scary.

“What if there are snakes?” The shaky voice was mine.

My oldest brother laughed. “What if there aren’t?”

His optimism notwithstanding, he was holding a stick in his hand as he pulled the door open. We stayed well behind him, but eventually, we all trooped through the open entrance to the vegetable cellar. It was not much more than a hollow in the side of the hill, excavated here and there to make room for shelves, upon which sat the bounty of my old relatives’ garden. It would feed them through the winter.

There were no snakes.

I would never have known that on my own. The door would have remained closed. Funny. Nearly fifty years on, I’m still afraid to open doors.

What’s behind the door in front of you right now? Why aren’t you turning the knob instead of standing there, petrified?

If God brought you to the door, there is nothing behind it that has any power to harm you.

He has given us the key to open every lock and will make provision for every obstacle we meet, once inside. Just a note of warning—if you have to slip the lock with your credit card, He didn’t want you in there. Some doors were never intended for us to open.

Too many times though, I have stood in front of a door to which He has given access and failed to go through it. What if I fail?

We fail because we fear to try.

Many more times than we meet insurmountable obstacles, we simply don’t attempt the deed at all.

Open the door!

Go through it!

You might still want to carry that stick.

I will keep you and will make you…to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
(Isaiah 42: 6,7 ~ NIV)

There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky;
And you ask, “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?
(Erin Hanson ~ Australian poet)

If Tomorrow Never Comes

August 11, 2015August 12, 2016 ~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

Faint not—fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.

“I’ll just take this with me, okay? There might be a poem in it I can use.”

I looked over at the Lovely Lady as I headed toward the door earlier tonight, waving the thin volume in the air as I spoke. The little book of popular poetry from the nineteenth century had come from her parent’s home (and possibly her grandparent’s before that), so I felt I needed her approval.

Smiling at me, she told me to take it. She never expected anything less when she brought it home a while back.

The little book of verse is lying open on my desk even now, along with three or four others. I really didn’t think I would find anything spectacular in it.

Poetry is just poetry. Sometimes.

Men and women in the past did just as many of us do today, sitting and meditating on our days and nights—remembering that we haven’t accomplished what we intended—recalling some important lesson we don’t want to lose in the gray haze of our busy lives. Dashing down words onto a page, we save the thoughts for another night, or another morning. Line by line, the thoughts and words take shape, achieving a semblance of wisdom or wit—or not.

As I glanced through the little book tonight, my eyes fell on the concluding line of a poem by the man who penned the words to that great old hymn, This is My Father’s World. The line is copied above, but I’ll repeat it here to save you the trouble of looking for it.

Faint not—fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.

I froze in the act of flipping to the next page. Then I reached for my phone. Only a week ago, I saved a thought in my notes there, a thought that had arrested me one afternoon. One afternoon—on one of those days.

You know the kind of day I mean. The cares and troubles of the world already pressing down on you are joined by a mountain of tasks to be completed. To add to it all, nothing is going as it should. Nothing. One failure after another—one disgruntled patron after another, lead to the terrifying feeling of drowning.

The words I wrote that afternoon are still there, where I saved them in black and white, and the fear returns.

There are days when I panic and wonder, how do I get to tomorrow from here? Click To Tweet

There are days when I panic and wonder, how do I get to tomorrow from here?

The fear of drowning is real—the fear is—even if the danger is not.

My mind wanders and I see an eight-year-old lad with short blond hair and brown skin crouched beside a swimming pool. Wound up like a spring, he is watching the camp’s activity director closely. The man holds a silver steel ring in his hand and then with a quick motion, releases it into the air to fall in the deep end of the pool. Within a second, the boy is diving into the water, eight feet deep and well over his head.

The idea is to retrieve the ring from the bottom of the pool more quickly than the other boys have achieved the task. He is sure he can do better. There is no fear at all in his mind—yet.

Dropping quickly, he heads for the spot he last sighted the target. As he nears the bottom, his ears begin to pop; the water pressure at that depth is much higher than in the air above or even in the shallows of the other end. No matter, he is still confident, but for some reason cannot see the ring.

His eyes have started burning in the chlorine-treated water and his ears are actually hurting a little now. The boy finds himself a little disoriented, but looking above through squinted eyelids, determines where he is in relationship to the sides and the water’s surface, and continues feeling along the bottom of the concrete pool. Then he feels it.

No. Not the ring; He feels the fear.

He is running out of oxygen in his lungs. He had taken a huge breath prior to jumping in, but his discomfort has used up precious time and burned more air than he expected. It is all he can do to persevere and grab the ring as his hand contacts it.

No, it wasn’t the ring after all, but only the grill around the pool’s drain.

Now panic really is gripping him, his heart pounding uncontrollably in his chest, but he won’t give up.

There! There it is! He has it in his hand and heads to the surface. But, in his panic, he forgets to push off on the bottom and is left to flail and kick his way up, eight long feet to the life-giving oxygen.

In his mind, he is drowning. He can’t get there; the pressure in his lungs is too great. He will have to exhale and breathe in before he reaches the surface. It hurts too much! He knows he will die, simply knows it!

Just as he exhales, the pressure exploding from his mouth and nose, his blond head emerges from the water. Gasping the precious, life-giving oxygen into his lungs, he stabs his hand above his head in triumph—just as if he hadn’t given up all hope just seconds before—and shows the ring to the waiting group.

Two things I remember, fifty years along the road of life. Two things.

The waiting group of swimmers wasn’t all that impressed. No one congratulated me on persevering though the panic. In fact, not one of my fellow campers ever admitted to feeling that same fear. Not one.

Neither did I. Never. Until now.

The second thing? I had to do it all again the very next day. And the next day, and the next.

Life keeps coming at us. Daily. And, we either face it and go through, or we fail in our aspirations. We persevere and push on, or we are overcome and give up.

I don’t want anyone to believe they are the only one who feels that fear. The thing I’m sure of is there is someone close to me and to you right now who is feeling it. Maybe you should ask the person next to you if they’ve ever felt the panic. If they’re honest, they will remember a time. They might even be going through it right this minute.

How about it? Are your eyes burning? Are your lungs bursting? Is your heart beating so fast you think it may never recover?

Me too.

Hang in there. Today, we fight. Ah, but tomorrow? Tomorrow, we sing. Click To Tweet

Hang in there. Today we fight.

Ah, but tomorrow?

Tomorrow, we sing.

Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not—fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.
(From Be Strong by Maltbie Babcock ~ American hymn writer ~ 1858-1901)

When I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust. I will not be afraid.
(Psalm 56:3,4 ~ NIV)

At the Edge

July 7, 2015July 7, 2015 ~ Paul Phillips ~ 3 Comments

Do you know what fear looks like?

Of course, you do.

You’ve seen frightened children, so scared they don’t believe that even Mommy can save them from the monsters in the closet. You’ve even seen fear exhibited again and again on the movie screen and on television, as actors open their eyes wide and let their mouths stand agape in terror at the appearance of some malevolent creature, extracted from the dark corners of a writer’s imagination.

I know all about that kind of fear, either the honest reaction from an innocent, untaught yet in the arts of deception, or the feigned emotion of a hardened pretender.

The fear I wonder about tonight is the fear all around us. I’m wondering what the terror of disasters imagined, or the memory of catastrophes which really occurred in the past looks like.

Do you know? Can you describe the face of fear—real fear?

I am coming to realize that I cannot, because I don’t know what it really looks like. All the stereotypes of the looks of fear I know are false—or at least lacking in understanding.

On a recent day, a couple hiked along the ridge on a mountaintop. The beauty of the morning was so real, you could almost have grasped it between your fingers. Swallowtail butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom of the wildflowers beside the trail, along with a buzzing honey bee or two. Every so often, a clumsy bumblebee would come humming by, intent on claiming his portion of the sweet nectar in the blossoms.

The air was cool and a gentle breeze carried the chant of songbirds, oft repeated and frequently elaborated upon, to their ears. The deep greens of the leaves and the azure blue of the skies, which could be seen almost below their feet, were brilliant.

What would one need fear up on that mountaintop?

The trail led to a lookout point, an outcropping of boulders solidly set upon the side of the ridge. They stood beside each other and marveled at creation and also at a Creator who could imagine such a place and then speak it into existence. Just then though, something caught the eye of the man.

Fifty or sixty feet to the north of the lookout upon which they stood, a promontory jutted out, the sheer fall below it dropping down many feet to the valley floor.

It was an invitation not to be ignored.

“Stay here,” he suggested to the woman. “I’ll go out there and you can take my picture.”

She wasn’t happy about it, but agreed to be his photographer, waiting patiently as he made his way over to the point. There was no trail to it but, slipping and sliding a little here, creeping down a boulder there, and in between steps, keeping an eye out for snakes, he eventually arrived at the destination.

Feet spread far apart, he stood atop the pile of rocks with hands on hips and arms akimbo, looking for all the world as if he had just discovered a new land. In that stance, he waited to ensure that photographic proof existed of his courage and daring. She snapped the picture.

It’s not possible to see his face in the photograph. It doesn’t matter. He is smiling.

Smiling.

With a quick glance down to the bottom of the chasm before him, he turned and climbed back to the marked trail, laughing as he rejoined his lovely wife. He shrugged off her repeated objection to his foolish insistence of making the risky tramp out onto the rocks. He was proud of himself.

Proud.

Until that night. In the dark, he closed his eyes to sleep, falling instead to his death again and again in the visions that filled his mind. Behind closed eyelids he could see nothing but the edge of the abyss, and the ground coming up to meet him as he tumbled through the air.

Terrified.

He was terrified. No, not just as he lay sleepless in his bed. He had been terrified as he slid and stepped clumsily to the edge of the precipice in the light of day.

Standing arrogantly and smiling, his spirit was, in truth, melting into jelly inside of him.

The face of fear smiles. It smiles.

I wonder then—what about the other emotions we feel so deeply? What does sadness look like? Or depression?

I stood and talked with a woman today about her two-year long bout with depression, still ongoing. I have seen her often in the last two years, but never had an inkling—not an inkling.

Sickness, abuse, stress at work, cruelty of friends—all have surrounded her spirit and informed her very soul that she is of little worth and that nothing will ever change.

Still she smiles and jests, the facial expression and jokes a thin covering over a festering wound that will one day destroy her and those around her.

The face of depression doesn’t just mope, doesn’t only frown—it also smiles broadly.

Is it any wonder we think we are alone? If fear smiles and depression tells jokes, surely pain shows a false face to the world as well. The hurts of a lifetime are penned up behind the facade of impenetrability. And, we believe we are alone in this world.

Surely no one feels as badly as I. Certainly no normal person deals with my pain, my sadness, my fears. How easy it is to believe the lie which deception tells.

I sat with friends tonight and admitted for the first time my fear of the edge, of the heights above which I stood on that recent excursion onto the mountain. As we talked I found, to my surprise, that I was not alone in that fear, even in that small group of people.

The magnitude of the truth hits me where I live tonight.

How many smiling faces I see every day are hiding terror? How many happy-go-lucky folks are concealing their deep sadness behind the jocularity? How much pain have I missed in folks with whom I shake hands and exchange light-hearted greetings daily?

Do you suppose ten percent of the people I see are hiding feelings such as these? Thirty percent? Fifty?

It’s time for us to stop lying to each other. Time for us to stop hiding behind faces frozen into smiles and laughs which tell a different story than the truth of what lies within. Time for fear and sadness and pain to be brought to the light of day.

Jesus stood at the pinnacle of the temple looking down and the tempter told Him not to be afraid of falling from that great height. He stood at the tomb of His close friend and wept tears of sadness. He knew the pains of the heart—friends who abandoned Him and a people who refused to listen, and the pain of physical torture—yet He conquered both.

We’re not alone. Even if no one in the world is ever honest enough to admit their fellowship in our condition, we have a Savior who walked where we walk, and who felt the things we feel. He hasn’t forgotten who we are, nor has He lost His ability to touch us where we live.

And, He has given us the ability to help each other. Even the empathy we feel for others comes from His great love for us.

It all starts with the truth of who we are. Facades will have to tumble before changes are made. Truth doesn’t imprison us, nor allow us to stay in that state.

We will know the truth, and freedom will be ours.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
(James Baldwin ~ American writer ~ 1924-1987)

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
(Ephesians 4:25 ~ ESV)

Essentials

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015 ~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

The thunder reverberates in waves outside. Again.

I have been here before.

Usually, the sound gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside and I smile and breathe a prayer of thanks to the Creator.

It is, after all, Springtime in the foothills of the Ozarks, and time for the thunderstorms and the rain that replenish the many rivers and lakes. The farmers count on the rainfall for a good year, some needing plentiful hay crops for livestock, while others await the yield of fruit on trees and vines, come Fall.

Rain is essential to all life.

There is no smile on my face tonight. The prayers I’m breathing to the Creator are for relief from the torrential downpours which have caused incredible hardship for many and even loss of life for some. The floods have carried away people and property alike. To some, it must appear that rain is to be hated, an evil thing intent on their destruction.

Rain is essential to all life.

It’s still true, isn’t it?

He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust equally. He sends the rain to fulfill His purpose and it will not return to the heavens without accomplishing what it was sent out for. Rain waters the earth, and the earth give forth its harvest. Again and again. One season follows another, the cycle uninterrupted.

Still, I’m not smiling. I don’t even know what to say in my prayers now.

I agree that we require rain for life. I dare not ask for the cycle to be broken. And yet. . .

My friend and his family spent last night in one end of his home, waiting for the old oak trees to topple onto the roof at the other end. Two had already fallen and crushed cars in the driveway and these were leaning, their roots pulling loose from the wet soil.

Others I know have spent dark, damp nights waiting for the break of day to see where the water line is on their walls and furniture. Still others have prayed and cried as the waters rose and then receded.

Their homes were untouched, but not their spirits.

And suddenly I know how to pray.

Why do we focus on the physical, when God clearly places a premium on our spiritual well being? Are we really that short sighted?

“Please God, take this away from me! I don’t want to suffer.”

It’s the prayer I have prayed again and again. The same prayer I have heard from loved ones.

I’m still not smiling. I am filled with hope, though.

I will sit, here in the comfort and safety (for now) of my home, and pray for the protection of the spirits and souls of my friends and all those affected by the disasters they are suffering.

God has not promised ease and comfort, nor has He guaranteed physical immunity from disaster. What He has vowed is that the uncomfortable and dangerous times will not touch the real us–the center of our being which is of infinite value to Him.

When you walk through the floods, they will not overwhelm you! When you walk through the flame, you won’t be burned. Have no fear; I have redeemed you; I have called you by name. You are mine!

Is the physical suffering real? Does He care about that? Yes and yes! But, He cares so much more about who we are beyond the physical and the temporal.

He intends to spend eternity with us! How would He not keep us from harm?

It doesn’t mean I’m about to start smiling yet. People I know are still frightened and sad. He made us to care about that. But, deep down, I know that God’s got this.

He’s got this!

The waters will recede. The trees will be cut up to use as firewood next winter. Life goes on.

The cycle is unbroken.

Here comes the rain again.

God is good.

“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
(Corrie Ten Boom ~ Dutch author/Nazi Holocaust survivor ~ 1892-1983)

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
(Isaiah 43:2 ~ ESV)

He's Taken Leave

Random wanderings with Paul Phillips

fear

Afraid

Bars Made of String

If Tomorrow Never Comes

At the Edge

Essentials