An Excerpt on Fear and Death

My previous post that included a collection of chapters curated from various resources by the folks at www.wtsbooks.com included a few devotions from  A Small Book for the Anxious Heart: Meditations on Fear, Worry, and Trust by Ed Welch.  I present one of those devotions here for your reading and edification below.  The passage from Hebrews 2 that Welch quotes in this is one that I have had laid before me a few times in my reading of late.  I guess when God starts repeating himself, I need to listen, huh?

Fear and Death (Welch)

Enduring Alarm Moments

“Think about when you accidentally set off an alarm and you hear a sample of what people in crisis are experiencing. There is a lot of emotional noise in their lives; there is chaos… If people seek you out during their alarm moments, they will bring you their noise… We are uneasy in the face of unadulterated terror and pain. When an alarm goes off, we want it stopped… When an alarm goes off, fleeing is a normal response. Alarms mean things are not okay. How can we have staying power in alarm moments like these?”

Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores https://g.co/kgs/X45C6m

A Series I’m Attempting

Because the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” is proving to be a dangerous and abiding presence in popular discussions, I’m trying my hand at a series that is related to it over at the website of the church where I serve.  If you have an adolescent in the home, check out the first installment: http://www.meadowviewpca.org/13-reasons-good-reasons-live/

A moment of public honesty from vocal unbelief

There have been a few brave exceptions (Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdi, Sam Harris), but the fact that we can count the main exceptions on one hand kind of proves the point.  This recent article points out that the main thing driving the main halls of unbelief into a strategic retreat isn’t really strategy.  It’s fear.  Please take note of the word “main.”  There are plenty of internet trolls out there who will speak out vociferously against the evils perpetrated by fundamentalist Islam.  But a secular Facebook rant against Islam’s human rights’ violations or a few vitriolic anti-Islamic words in the comment section of a Mother Jones article doesn’t really qualify someone as courageous for standing against the aforementioned evils.  What will the voices of public unbelief do when their words might cost them something?  How will the internal resources that secularism provides assist the secularist who finds himself/herself suffering as a result of standing up for what they believe in?  I honestly hope that secularists will find their courage and leverage their substantial resources to speak out against the most egregious sources of religious liberty and human rights violations.