In the midst of this pandemic, I have a question for you. Bold and uncensored.
A somber, blunt, bare-your-soul kind of question.
What’s your worst fear?
Is it this virus?
This plague that violently attacks some… and leaves them gasping for breath… fighting for dear life?
Is that the vexing thing that looms low and dark, ominous and unsettling? The thing that instantly evokes foreboding… or sheer terror? The invisible enemy that creeps close, no matter which way you turn. The threat that slinks and slithers into every quiet moment and leaves you rattled, reeling.
Maybe COVID-19 isn’t the thing. Sure, it’s taken center stage… but behind the curtain lurks another assailant, taunting you with terrifying “what ifs” or “what nows” or grim predictions or false accusations. Threats of inescapable heartbreak or inevitable failure: infertility, arrest, abuse, bankruptcy, betrayal.
Perhaps it’s something even worse. Maybe you’re terrified of watching someone you love… leave.
Or suffer.
Or self-destruct.
Or die.
(Does it matter the culprit? COVID, cancer, cardiac failure… they’re all merciless killers.)
Whatever it is, I’m guessing it’s heavy. And hard. And hurts like hell.
Fear and dread drag us to the shadowlands and abandon us there. They make us scratch/claw/cower/sob. They predict defeat and suggest surrender. Or lay blame and offer ammo.
They whisper doom.
So we seek scapegoats and stockpile munitions (masks/gloves/groceries/guns) and sometimes we make human shields of the people we hold dearest. (Because they’re near.)
Fear convinces us that we are utterly alone. That we have to walk the proverbial plank (or lie in the ICU bed) unaccompanied and unprotected, bound and bare.
Dread persuades us that no one has the faintest clue what we’re going through… or what peril awaits.
No one.
Not a single soul.
But it isn’t true.
Because…
Jesus.