Fear
shakes from pillar to post, but faith secures the foundations.
When we are gripped with fear we do feel shaken. Our whole
outlook is affected by the fear and nothing feels certain anymore. This fear
tends to shape our every awareness. It taints our vision.
But with faith our vision is secured and all the uncertainty
within the imagination is settled. Faith stops fear in its tracks and is the
recovery exercise doing all it can to produce the foundation of right action.
With faith we see in a steady way and our judgment is secure; even against
significant stress.
Fear produces sensations of anxiety, but faith settles every
jittery nerve.
Anxious trembling, especially that
which is hidden, reveals our confidence is shattered. Times such as these we
are overwhelmed. All of our experience is subsumed in a cause for survival that
has not hope.
But faith is a miracle. With just
enough courage to explore a fix for our anxiety, the fix comes, albeit
unexpectedly. This is not to deride such a vociferous foe as anxiety. Faith
does not underestimate anxiety, and it therefore has a simple response for us
to implement at a conscious level. Faith allows us to relax in the moment. Yes,
with faith, a way that will work for us can be shown to us.
Fear causes doubt to whistle through our spirits, where faith
ensures a sublime trust.
Fear comes suddenly as a chilly
wind through a ghost town. It strikes us when we least expect it. It says, “HA!” It can leave us overwhelmed for
hours or days. An unsettled spirit is the cause undetermined, paralysed,
betrayed.
Now faith has a different angle,
where we can see it. Again, vision is the secret. Against the eerie wind shear
comes a settling stillness—space to contemplate. Faith, especially through
prayer, brings a sublime trust. We do not know how God gives us this power; all
we know is we experience it, first hand.
Fear establishes the end of hope, but faith restores our sense
of belief.
With a gripping sense of fear all
hope comes to an end. Even if we retain part of our hope, the wonder in that
hope is stifled and eventually strangled.
But faith protects our hope
through the restoration of our belief. Many times this happens without visible
reason—without certainty of hope. With faith we comfortably risk again. We
determine it is better to risk losing than to believe in something altogether stifling
and strangling. We choose to believe in a hope because of what it does to our
spirits to enliven them.
Whatever fear can do to discourage us, faith does better to
restore our hope.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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