the last of the trilogy....fear v. love

it was 2am. i was losing in a battle against a sinus infection, had a total of 17 hours of sleep in the last 4 nights, and had a 10 hour drive in store for myself the next day.

yet...

i was sitting in a hotel lobby chatting with a friend about weaknesses...his weakness?

he responded:


"a fear of man."


(i think for a moment before responding)


"What? what's 'fear of man'?"

i mean let's think about it: are we really 'afraid' of the guy sitting next to us? do i really flinch when someone walks by because i think he'll cause me pain?

while my friend never really explained his fear simply enough for this simple brain, i've been thinking about his comments ever since that evening several months ago...

have you read C.S. Lewis' space trilogy? me neither. but i did recently read the 2nd in the series, "Perelandra". The lead character, Ransom, fears the 'un-man' character in the story...why? because this particular 'un-man' is actually a human body inhabited by satan. makes ya wanna go check out the gruesomeness now doesn't it?!?


even as i read the story, i was a little creeped out by the 'un-man'. there's something unnerving when even considering a human body is inhabited by satan.

towards the end of the book, Ransom had to actually fight the 'un-man' in hand-to-hand combat. prior to the fight, the thought of touching the 'un-man', much less fighting him, totally freaked Ransom out. but, once he started fighting the 'un-man', he found that the creature was really not something to be so paralyzingly scared of.

my whole point is not to eek you out or to get you to swear of of any future possibility of reading the trilogy.

rather...my thought on fear is: confront it. sounds simple eh? a textbook answer even. but, once we confront it, it's not near as scary.

occasionally, i freak out about a boogey man in the closet. crazy. but i really do. and when this happens, i have 1 of 2 choices: freak out and lay there til morning, or check out the closet, all the while quoting Joshua 1:9. i sleep much better when i go ahead and shuffle a few hangers about checking for traces of slimy monsters.

knowing that He loves me, i face the fears. He'll take care of me.