Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

Fear truly can be insidious. Today we read a portion of Psalm 40 aloud with the objective of determining which verse resonated for us.

I could not choose between two.

I realized when I thought about the first-- "You are the Lord: do not withhold your compassion from me; let your love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever. (v. 12)"--that its subject matter in one sense was truly about fear. By saying "You are the Lord," we acknowledge that God has the power--and what that means is that we indeed are defenseless relative to God and that we need him. So in this verse, we are really saying: please God, we acknowledge your power, take care of us, and don't let us get hurt. This verse poses the question that God responds to with "Be ye not afraid, for I have overcome the world."

The second--"Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me. (v. 14)--feels very much like how I am feeling now. (Hurry up, God.) But what I hear now when I write is that God works in his own time and at his own pace and that God knows are needs and the timing of our needs even better than we know them ourselves. There is great comfort in this.

Perfect love casts out fear.

Bearing Witness

What does it mean to bear witness?

When I left the Sacred Way Group this morning at Saint Mark’s, I felt a rush of energy that I have not felt in a long time.

What occurred to me is that the act of publicly recollecting my meditation experience at Grace Cathedral in 1986 was very powerful: almost as powerful or perhaps as powerful—I cannot really distinguish—as the original experience itself.

Am I affected by ancient prohibitions, like the Jewish precept that one should not say the name of God, Yahweh, aloud? I hesitate before writing what I want to write, which is that the voice I heard in 1986 and which I bore witnesss to today said: “Be ye not afraid, for I have overcome the world.” (And as I was about to type “Be ye not afraid,” I heard very clearly another voice stating: “Know that I am the Lord, thy God, and that thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”)

Everyone is different.

While I was engaging in centering prayer, I felt the struggle to “center.” I kept on repeating the one word that I had chosen as my centering word. As I drove home, stopping at Peet’s for coffee, I felt that rush of energy—but really much more a rush of receptivity—and the relief that comes from God being on our side—and more importantly—as I believe Jim Walsh puts it—our being on God’s side.

For the Lord he is good, and his mercy endureth forever.