But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.”
Matthew 14:27
Lord, my soul longs to draw near to You,
And let Your feather-soft care surround me.
I seek to embrace Your loving mercies anew,
Covering me like the full moon shining upon the sea.
Lord, my heart is afflicted by fears without and within;
May Your Presence calm and dispel this turmoil.
I’ll fly swiftly under the shelter of Your pinions,
Resting my weary head as I let go of useless toil.
When my soul is still, abiding under Your wings,
Then my heart is untroubled and freed from despair.
Your faithfulness like a shield, scatters dark forebodings,
Casting down imaginations doubting Your gracious care.
Bridge
As the small child, lifted and enfolded in Your arms;
As the one whom You loved leaned upon Your breast;
So, You’ll receive me to Your side, away from all harm.
How is it that God Most High dwells with the lowly?
The Almighty Creator comforts us with love so gracious?
I belong with the Eternal God, exalted and holy;
In the everlasting Presence of peace and goodness.
C.A. TAYLOR
The Everlasting Presence
‘Fear not’; ‘Be of good courage’; ‘Be not afraid.’ In one form or another this phrase recurs continually throughout our reading of the Bible, like the refrain of a ballad or a hymn. It is, in short, the trumpet-call with which the God of Israel heralds each one of His recurrent miracles. Can we wonder, then, that this message of comfort would hedge about the greatest miracle of all—the birth of Jesus? That life was ushered in by a glad burst of music which broke upon the midnight darkness at Bethlehem at the Nativity, and ‘fear not’ was the burden of the angel chorus.
‘Anxiety,’ declared Adler, ‘is an extraordinarily widespread trait. It accompanies an individual from earliest childhood to old age. It embitters his life to a marked degree, keeping him from human contacts, and destroying his hope of building up a peaceful life or making fruitful contributions to the world. Fear can touch every human activity. One can be afraid of the outer world, or of the world within himself.’
‘Be not afraid.’ What are the things that frighten us—that weigh on the mind and depress the spirit, and lead to morbid terrors by night as well as by day? Quite common things, many of them—the fear of ill-health, of old age, of poverty; the fear of the ingratitude of children as they grow up; the fear of men’s scorn, laughter, and contempt. Can any one say that these are not matters of concern to us that they do not lead us into anxieties, meannesses, hypocrisies—even dishonesties—of which in our hearts we are ashamed, even though the shame we once felt may have become dulled by long custom? Can any one say that these fears do not overshadow our lives to such a degree that we think less than we ought to of the needs and sufferings of others?
The Christian gospel bids us to look at Jesus and put our fears aside; it repeats His words: ‘It is I; be not afraid.’ For Jesus during all His earthly life faced fears such as these. He knew what poverty and degradation were; He experienced the ungrateful and cowardly desertion of those who owed Him everything; He knew the contempt and laughter of the Sadducees, and the bitter hatred of the Pharisees. But not once did He on that account swerve from the narrow path of perfect Sonship which He had set before Himself. He was faithful and fearless to the last; and it is our duty, with that Pattern before us to be fearless too.
Believing as we do, that Jesus was in all things truly man, we must believe that He, too, experienced such moments, if not more, when the thought of death loomed before Him as something almost unbearable; the agony of soul in Gethsemane must have been concerned, in part at least, with this. And a way of escape was still open. But He refused to compromise even at the approach of death in one of its most terrible forms. He yielded nothing to fear.
What counsel can we summon to our aid, then, when the icy hand of fear is laid upon us? There are some who bid us say to ourselves that there is nothing to be afraid of. But that Stoic exhortation has never helped mankind very much: our fears are real, we say; how absurd, then, to tell us that their objects are not real! ‘Dismiss your fears; don’t think of them, and all will be well,’ say others; but this again is to counsel an impossibility. For fear is nearer to the frightened man than anything else about him; it is the one thing he can either ignore nor forget.
Such fears as these of which we have been thinking—the fears of poverty, disgrace, suffering and death—are common and, as we may say, ‘natural’ to man; and many religions have bidden him not to be afraid of them. But no religious pioneer or prophet has been able to stand by man’s side and say, ‘It is I; be not afraid,’ with the same convincing tones as Jesus, who shared all things with all men even unto wounds and death. Not with mere bravado do we face the ultimate issues of life when we have the Cross before our eyes.
Yet it is not alone because His victory over human fears was the greatest in history that is able to save us from fear. It is not to the example of Jesus alone that we look, but to Jesus crucified and risen and living and ever present with us. What is it we fear—death, desertion, poverty, disgrace? Christ endured them all, and His victorious Spirit may be ours. What is it we fear—the paralyzing strength of temptation: Christ knew it too and for our sake He conquered it. In every occasion of fear the power of Christ’s Spirit is ready to banish all that fills us with terror; and the words of the text are words which speak from His heart to ours— ‘Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.’
JAMES HASTINGS
The Speaker’s Bible
