If It’d Been a Snake…

I’ve dodged a lot of them.  Bullets, I mean.  “Dodged” may be the wrong characterization.  I didn’t even know they were coming.  They missed me anyway.  I understood the danger after the events.  You’d think I’d have learned valuable lessons, but often I didn’t.  It’s not that none of them took hold, but even I think I should be smarter by now.  To be sure, there were many other occasions on which I never even knew (then or now) danger threatened.

That’s the thing about bullets that don’t find their mark.  The target never knew they were fired.  They came out of nowhere.  Unseen.  Unheard.  He never knew what hit him.  Life’s a lot like that.  There’s danger all around.  Someone said to me recently, “You never know when you’re going to get the call that changes your life.” At any moment, our lives are subject to radical change we never saw coming.

I once walked up on a drug deal.  Nearly twenty years ago, while doing probation work in Nashville, TN, I stumbled on the scene as I was making contacts in an economically-challenged part of town.  Without registering emotion or recognition, I just kept on going.  It was later that I reflected on the danger of the situation.  We may find ourselves in other tenuous positions recognized after the fact, as well.

Often, unseen danger is right there.  Frightening, really, when you think of the possibilities.  But danger is not the only thing.  David said that goodness and mercy followed him.  Wherever he went- they went.  So it is with each follower of Christ. God’s grace and kindness are ever present.  Disaster may await unseen, but there are also unseen guardsmen protecting us.  More often than any other prohibition in the New Testament, Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid.”

Fear is the enemy of faith and all spiritual progress.  Because we can’t see what is going on does not mean nothing is happening.  While we have a real enemy desiring our hurt, we also have a real Savior walking alongside us on the road of life.  He is our invisible support in imminent danger.  The “everlasting arms” of God are underneath us.  We rely on them even when we don’t recognize they are there.  In our dangerous world, the unseen governs the apparent.  Don’t be afraid.

Sterl

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