C.S. Lewis once said that he was astounded how close grief was
to the feeling of fear.
There are many things that implicate us in fear. Certainly the grief of uncertainty, where the
floor has fallen out of the security we had in life. When life is irreparably changed. There are situations we find implicitly
fearful, where vulnerability takes the place of safety. And then there’s our own minds, which cause
us to fear things known and unknown, real and unreal.
Recently I had a moment, like so many other moments.
One moment where doubt shredded the present, and suddenly I felt
boundless in the worst of ways.
Mentally, I considered giving up, right there, right then. I was saying in my mind, “What’s the use?” It was one of those instants where I would
rather have not been alive. My mind was
amess with negativity; just in that moment.
Up until that moment, I’d been positive regarding the predicament I
found myself in. Yet all it took was a
few seconds of spiritual attack, and I was again at the mercy of Satan — a place
where there is no mercy.
Fortunately, the next moment God’s Presence reminded me to just
become mindful — to stop focusing on the negativity, and to just become present
and mindful again.
I found that simply concentrating on the task at hand, being
present in doing that well, made me able to overcome the moment where fear threatened
to overwhelm me. And ten minutes later I
was ever thankful for God’s Presence in that moment.
Being mindful helps us nullify negative thoughts, which makes us
feel better and less fearful.
Engaging in mindfulness as prayer aligns our minds to the truths
in God’s Word, to repel spiritual attack.
Iterations of fear are not entirely removed from our lives so we
might learn to come back, again and again, to God through mindfulness as
prayer. It’s how we develop resilience.
© 2016 Steve Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment