No Guilt in Life, No Fear in Life either

Guilt and fear. They circle around, twin sharks ready to devour the Nobody little minnow that is me. And I panic and shut my eyes and put my hands over my ears and try to bury my head in the sand. Only there isn’t any sand.

Why do I allow myself to be so easily frightened by these things, even when I am swimming in oceans of love and grace and mercy and protection and blessing? (Okay, Hannah, metaphor’s getting a little thin now. Better stop before it gets all watered down.) Haven’t I learned to trust Him? Won’t I ever learn?

I look at God’s blessings, and say, he can’t love me like that. I know, because I know I don’t deserve to be loved like that. I have been focused on me, and I should have served Him better, and I should have trusted Him more, and I’m not a perfect Christian and I didn’t…

Or I look at the future, and say, I don’t know what I’m going to do, and I don’t know how I can handle this, and what if I mess this up, and I’m sure I’m going to suffer someday and I don’t if I can take it, and I don’t want to love this person because loving people hurts and what if…

Now some of this comes from personality. I am a wee bit of a perfectionist, and it’s easy for me to kick myself over lack of perfection in the past and to be petrified by fear of imperfection in the future. These are gaping holes in my armor that are just the right size for maybe not sharks, but arrows—and flaming arrows at that.

But youknowwhatyouknowwhat? I’m looking at the wrong person and the wrong time. When I am besieged by guilt, I’m looking at the past, and all I’m seeing is Me. Is God big enough to cover my sins and my mistakes? Well, Yes. When something paranizes me with fear, I’m looking at the future, and all I see is Me. But is God in control, and big enough to cover the sins and mistakes I will make then, too? Well...Yes.

Here I would quote The Screwtape Letters, except for the difficulties of finding the right passage and trying to quote it in a way to get across what Lewis is saying through Screwtape’s messed-up mouth. Besides the embarrassment of placing his brilliant and clear writing in too-close contrast to my own.

Instead, therefore, I shall attempt to summarize a new point I gleaned from them this time around.

God wants us to be focusing on only two times: Eternity, and the Present. Or perhaps it would be better to say, the Present in an Eternal perspective. He wants me to look at time the way He sees it, so that when I look back, I see a cross that proves His love and forgiveness. And when I look forward, I see the One with scars in His hands welcoming me home. The past is not there to haunt me; it is covered. Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead! The future is not there to hunt me; it is covered. What is what-if to you? You follow me!

The gratitude for the past, the promise of the future, drive me to live in the now. As I stoop to pick up the shield labeled, “Faith,” I see that He is here- right now- with me. And the burden is light.