While checking on my friend yesterday, he made a statement which he has made many times in the six years I have known him.  He told me all of his troubles would be over if he could just get the rye seed planted in time for his cows to graze, and he was three weeks behind already.  I told him in the few years I have known him as soon as one concern or crisis was over, another supplanted the former.  He laughed when I told him it was much like the train which runs through his ranch.  I call it the train of troubles.  As soon as one ends another begins, or so it seems.  And if good comes to him, he finds something to worry about.  I told him he is the type of person to find a problem behind every tree or manufacture a problem when there are none.  He agreed, which is surprising.  He understands that about himself.

We all tend to be like this.  I know I do.  I try not to worry as much, but it is difficult for me.  I pray constantly about my fears, and it will take some time for me to overcome this tendency.  I have made some progress, but have not overcome it completely.

“There were they in great fear, where no fear was:  for God had scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee; thou has put them to shame, because God hath despised them.”     (Psalm 53:5)

“The people of God became fearful where there was no fear.  They were filled with consternation, because they felt the threat of being overtaken by the wicked.  It was a cycle of decreasing faith and increasing fears.  Hence the Great Protector reminded them that he had scattered the bones of an adversary and had put the enemy to shame.  He refreshed their memory to abate their misgivings.

The passage addresses a common woe of man – fear, which often exists for no cause other than fear.  Man’s major fear is fear.

A wild, fearful imagination sees a storm in every cloud, a falling limb on every tree, a snake behind every log and a death in every illness.  The scared person sees more dangers than the world could possibly hold.

O anxious people!  O blind hearts!  In what uncalled for fear you spend these few fleeting years?  Where is your faith?  If we are living in the promises of God, we have nothing to fear.  For – God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”     ~ Henri Estienne

“So with renewed faith we say, farewell to fear.”         ~ Leroy Brownlow

“Thought – To take thought, to be solicitous or anxious.”     Matthew VI  (6:25)    ~ American Dictionary of the English Language – Noah Webster 1828

Eileen Light