“AIN’T GOING TO FEAR NO MORE”
January 26, 2011
I wrote this article for the Lewiston Tribune and it appeared in the religion section on Jan 9th. Several people commented that they thought it was a good article and so I want to share it with all of you who haven’t gotten a chance to read it.
“AIN’T GOING TO FEAR NO MORE”
I’m tired of being afraid, I’m even more tired of being told I should be afraid. I was born in 1961 the year of the “Bay of Pigs” followed quickly by the Cuban missile crisis in 1963. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. were on the brink of war, a war that people said would destroy the world. As a child I grew up watching the war in Vietnam and the riots in the streets of American cities on T.V. I grew up knowing that whether I liked it or not I would be drafted and be sent off to fight. I graduated from high school knowing that the world was going down the sink and President elect Reagan was going to start World War Three. I joined the service and guarded Nuclear weapons that could eradicate life if they fell in to the wrong hands, then I was deployed for the Gulf War and everyone knew it was the beginning of the apocalypse. Then I lived through Y2K and the impending end of everything. Then my country was attacked on 9/11 and we knew we the world would never be the same. The whole time I heard a steady drumbeat of fear that the moral fabric of our society was unraveling and we were becoming as corrupt and soft as ancient Rome. Now we hear that we should be afraid very afraid, the president is destroying us, God’s wrath is coming, the world is ending in 2012 or is it May of 2011, I don’t know I can’t keep it straight. What I do know is that my strength and my help come from the Lord, God is my shepherd and I am part of God’s flock. My understanding of the Holy Scriptures is that God is in control, the God who called Abram and Sarai, who rescued his chosen from Egypt, who sent his son for me and called the church into being on Pentacost, is the God that I love and who loves me. Because of this I am making a resolution for 2011. I will put my faith in God alone and I ain’t going to fear no more.
“Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.”- 1 Peter 1.21 D.C.
