July 8 - The Ropes Course - Part 1 - Focus on the Tree

One of my favorite books is Dune by Frank Herbert. There is a great litany in there called "The Litany Against Fear."

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

It's a cool piece of writing, but it is a little unrealistic. We cannot help having fear. It is a God-given gift. A wise person once said, "You cannot have courage without fear." What she meant by that was that if we did not have fear, there would be nothing to be courageous about. A more realistic line for the litany might be "I will not give in to fear."

The litany is also unrealistic in that God is not mentioned in it. "I will face my fear ... only I will remain." What so much focus on "I"? Are we so alone?

The Beeson Pastors had a chance to bond recently over a ropes course challenge. The chiggers not withstanding, it was a wonderful time of learning and growing. The hardest part of the course for many of us was walking 25 feet of log suspended 25 feet in the air. One was suspended by a mere rope. It was not the fear of falling that consumed me, but the fear of slipping, being the only one to slip and having to recover. I was very nervous, even tentative when I first walked out on the log. I found out from the ropes challenge people that this case of nerves ... this anxiety ... dare I call it fear? ... was because I was focusing on the log upon which I was walking and not on the tree to which it was bolted. "Focus on the tree!" they cried.

When I focused on the tree, the source of stablity, then and there I found stabilty. That's much like what happens with God. Don't we just focus on the path, it's perils and dangers, instead of focusing on God, our source of true stablity? It was a great lesson to learn that day and every day.