Fearless Living

Fear­less­ness is not tough­ness nor bravado. It is a state of soul that tran­scends your anx­i­eties and actual fears. It imag­ines a light at the end of the tun­nel even if it can­not see one. We live in fear-based times — and always have. I grew up dur­ing a time when peo­ple were build­ing bomb shel­ters in their back­yards for some immi­nent nuclear war. Other than dou­bling as storm shel­ters in the plains states, most of those shel­ters are now only stor­age rooms filled with cob­webs. There is no sur­viv­ing a nuclear attack, but there is life beyond your own physical demise.

Tran­scend­ing your own phys­i­cal exis­tence will bring you peace in the midst of chaos. While oth­ers are run­ning around in anx­ious states, frozen in fear, or dis­tract­ing them­selves through work and play, you are at peace. So you age and your body falls apart…so? How about a lit­tle faith? What (or bet­ter yet Who) got you here will take you beyond all of this.

“Do not let your hearts be trou­bled, and do not be afraid.” (Spo­ken by Jesus hours before his execution…and only a few days before his res­ur­rec­tion. I pre­fer his par­a­digm to all others.)

Fear nar­rows a person’s field of vision — both inside and out­side. It lim­its cre­ative think­ing. It pushes the ener­gies of the brain from the higher cul­tured lay­ers down into the more prim­i­tive fight/flight mech­a­nism. Fear dri­ves peo­ple from sophis­ti­cates to bar­bar­ians in a mat­ter of sec­onds. It also dri­ves wor­thy cul­tures out of existence.

Fear? No thanks. I do not watch those chan­nels or read those arti­cles. Fear is addic­tive and quite con­ta­gious. I will be going with the Lord on this one. No, I will not be hid­ing in polit­i­cal agen­das or kiss­ing insti­tu­tional sys­tems for my pro­tec­tion. Real courage strength­ens and expresses itself through gen­uine actions. Those actions are done on a daily basis toward the peo­ple actu­ally around you, for “love dri­ves out fear.”