The first sunday of advent: fear is not my future, you are

​Dear Jesus,

It’s the first Sunday of Advent. A season of joy. A season when we reflect on your arrival in the nativity scene, and all that your arrival will mean and has meant to the world.

I’ve borrowed a song from Maverick City Music to help with my own personal reflections this month. They have a song, maybe you’ve heard of it 😊 - it’s called Fear is Not My Future.

In the song, the writers make four proclamations:

Fear is not my future, you are.
Sickness is not my story, you are.
Heartbreak’s not my home, you are.
Death is not the end, you are.

This morning, I want to reflect on the first proclamation; fear is not my future, you are.

I confess, Jesus, for most of my life it’s been easier to sing those words in a song than declare them upon my life. For most of my life, fear HAS felt like my future.

I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this, but in the bible you say we weren’t created with a spirit of fear. Yet, the whole world seems to be running around in a perpetual state of fear.

So, I have found myself wondering, if you didn’t create this fear I have felt, and so many continue to fear, who did?

We did. I know, Jesus.

We did.

We did when we created relationships that have become emotionally and physically frightening to each other.

We did when we created mirrors that made us afraid of what we’d see when we looked in them.

We did when we adopted the pressures of the world as the pressures of our lives.

We did when we started celebrating Christmas while forgetting the promise that came with the baby in a feeding trough. The promise that no matter how insecure our present lives begin to feel, our futures are secure.

There’s another song. It’s called Fear is a Liar.

I think fear tries to tell us stories that make us so afraid of the future that we no longer desire the future. Tackling every day becomes a sense of obligation to living and not a longing to be alive.

Is that fear’s goal? To keep us alive so that it can keep telling us stories that make us wonder what the point of being alive even is?

I met a man once. He approached every day like life was a gift and not some chore life had ordered him to complete. I asked him one day; how do you do that? How do you show up to life each day looking like you’re happy to be here?

He asked me, do you really want to know?

I said yes. I do.

And Jesus – he told me it was you. He said he had a relationship with you that brought him a peace that surpasses all understanding.

I’d like to say from that day on I have lived a life without fear. I’d like to say from that day on I have never let fear lie to me again. I’d like to say from that day on I started living life like it was an opportunity and not an endurance event that feels like it will never end.

I’d like to say all of that, but I can’t.

What I can say, though, is that I’m getting there.

I can say that more days than ever, when it feels difficult to connect with anyone, I imagine myself standing beside the manger and being connected to the one who creates an inviting place for all of us.

I can say that more days than ever, when I look in the mirror and find it difficult to face what I see, I see your smile, your reminder that only fear can tell me I am not enough for that mirror.

And that fear is a liar.

I can say that more days than ever, when the pressures of the world feel too heavy to bear, I imagine you on the cross, bearing every weight and every pressure ever known to man, and absorbing them into you so you could descend with them to your grave.

Only to rise as the forever reminder: fear is not my future.

A forever reminder that the baby in a manger was much more than a story we’ll read out loud to one another over the course of this next month. Much more than the carols we’ll sing and the movies we will watch and the lights that will shine.

In a world built on fear – on lies – that baby in a manger, YOU Jesus, you are the truth, and you are the promise that makes life something to chase with the spirit of a newborn wanting to experience and know every single thing it can get its hands on.

With a peace that surpasses all understanding.

A fearless peace.

Because, Jesus, fear is not my future

You are.

May we all feel the peace of that reminder this Advent season.