Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’
I once had a mentor tell me that most people are either afraid of failure or success, and if you can figure out which one you are afraid of then you can challenge that fear and overcome it. That may very well be true, but I think it’s a little messier than that.
What I mean to say is that, at some point, everyone has the experience of being afraid of failure and, at some point, everyone has the experience of being afraid of success. Maybe you have not thought of it in these terms before, so let me say it another way. Fear of failure is mostly based on past experiences. This is why a child with no concept of what it means to swim will walk right into a pool when it sees others swimming. It has no reason to believe that it can’t swim – no concept of what it means to sink. Afterward, this child will know what it means to fail at swimming and will not want to do that again!
Fear of success, on the other hand, is based on the unknown. It may be as simple as that gut feeling of, “What happens next?” For me, the best example is parenting. When our children were born we had no idea what gender either would be. We wanted it to be a surprise, and we wanted to start out our relationship with them by loving them as they were without expectation. When our daughter was born I was overjoyed! I still remember the first time she wrapped her little fingers around my pinky – and my heart! I was immediately filled with joy and dread over the responsibility of becoming a parent. Likewise, when my son was born, I suddenly began to question all the things that Dads do with boys and wondering if I would ever measure up. It’s silly, but there I was – questioning what it meant to be a man and if I had the right stuff to be the kind of father this kid deserved.
These types of experiences get stored up and banked in our memory. They get expressed in our bodies in our posture and our interactions with others. That doesn’t mean that they control us, or at least, it doesn’t mean that we can’t overcome our fears. There are tons of examples throughout human history of people pushing past their fears, especially when there is something greater than themselves at stake.
One of my favorite examples is Katherine Johnson. She’s one of the three women that inspired the book Hidden Figures (and the film based on it as well), and she is one of many examples of African Americans who have had crucial roles in the development of our nation. While there is still a lot of work to do in our nation in regards to racial inequality – and recognizing the unrecognized is a big part of that work – I bring her up to acknowledge that not only did she have a lot to be afraid of, but her work is what helped others to have hope.
Sometimes having the support of someone else is not only “all we need to get by,” but it is the very thing we need to get by. Remember that fear of parenting thing? Fast forward five years. I was going on a mission trip and would be gone on my daughter’s 5th birthday, so I took her on a special trip to the circus, just the two of us. We got dressed up “all fancy”. I wore a tux and a top hat and she wore a princess dress with a special satin party hat. We were so fancy that some passers-by thought we were in the circus!
After the circus, we accidentally left her hat in the bathroom and had to go back in. By the time we found it and came back out the crowds were gone, it was getting dark, and I had no idea where the parking garage was. The map on my phone showed two different garages, and my battery was dying. To say the least, as we wandered the streets of downtown Savannah, GA after dark, I was terrified. We were a pretty obvious pair and an easy mark for anyone that might be in a desperate situation and making bad choices. As we walked she grabbed my hand and reminded me that everything is more fun when you skip. So we skipped and we sang a song she learned in church, “Be Strong and Courageous!” until we found our car.
To this day she claims that she is the one that found the car, and that’s fine. I may not have found it without her. The thing is, we rarely go it alone, even when we think that we do. There are, of course, decisions that we have to make and actions we have to take, and sometimes we feel like we might as well be walking on a high wire, all alone, with only the somewhat indifferent anticipation of the crowd to hold us.
That same mentor I mentioned before also told me that the only difference between walking a tightrope that is low to the ground or high in the sky is the distance from the ground, but then again, I would argue that the consequence of falling may change things a bit. Maybe that’s why I’m not a tightrope walker. Even so, I would imagine that the only way to remove the consequence of falling – apart from practice and the experience of not falling – is to be focused on the end and to trust in the rope.
Focusing on the destination and trusting in the presence of God has always been the way in which God’s people have overcome their fears – whether it is fear of the past or fear of the unknown future. Take Moses for example. He was a fugitive from the court of the Pharaoh in Egypt – not simply a runaway slave but a fugitive of the court of the Pharaoh!
He had found a pretty nice hideaway with Jethro. He had gotten married and had a solid job. Then God came to him in the form of a burning bush to tell Moses that God knew how bad it was in Egypt. Great! Then God told Moses to go tell Pharaoh to stop being mean, and Moses responds, “Um, yeah...I think you dialed the wrong bush. I am not so good at talking, and they’ll probably kill me on sight.”
It doesn’t really match with Cecil B. DeMille’s version or the actual text for that matter, but I like to think the bush chuckled a bit at that before saying, “Go get your brother, Aaron, and don’t worry – I’ll tell you what to say.”
A generation later we find the Israelites are not only free but formed into a people with law and an army and the opportunity to overthrow kings and kingdoms. I think it’s important to recognize that when God tells Joshua not to be afraid and to be strong and courageous, he’s not looking for his car in a deserted parking garage. This is the moment when the people became a nation. This is the moment when the God of the people of Israel became known as the God who provides and redeems and has the power to build up and to tear down, and if only the people will follow God they will be the ones that demonstrate God’s favor.
While I fully believe that is still true today, I think we have to remember that the point of the conquest of the land of Canna was to establish an understanding of Yahweh God as the one true God. Conquest and dominance were never meant to be an ongoing way – or a pattern of behavior – for God to demonstrate power so much as a means for God to demonstrate that God – the one true God – is active and present and in our midst.
It is, in fact, through Jesus Christ, God turned the tables on what it means to conquer and to live without fear. Through Jesus, God changed the idea of conquest on a cosmic and universal level so that we do not have to keep fighting the same battles over and over and over.
“for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
The gift of faith in Christ is that we do not have to dominate and conquer to demonstrate that God is active and present. We simply have to walk in faith and act out of love.
Like the tightrope walker, we know where we are going – even if sometimes it feels like we are blindfolded – and we can trust in the Lord as we can trust the rope. Like a lost child, we can fold onto the hand of our heavenly Father and even skip and sing in the face of danger. Like the lost parent, we can take joy in the faith of our young ones! Like those who are hidden figures in the fabric of history, we can take joy in those times that we have the privilege of being hidden support for the one God has called to act, and in our success, we can be gracious and thankful for the ones who risked it all to be sure that we had all we needed to get by.
Success and failure still matter, particularly when it comes to practical choices, but our faith gives us a different perspective on what it means to succeed. Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican Ashkenazi poet, essayist, historian and activist. She wrote a poem titled V’ahavta (and you shall love) that I believe demonstrates what God has been encouraging in us all along.
These are just a few excerpts from it, (click here for full text) but I think it gets the idea across...
“Imagine winning. This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child.
It is your child...
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more….
Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live.
Have hope. Live without fear. The Lord is in our midst. Be strong and courageous – now and always. Amen.
I once had a mentor tell me that most people are either afraid of failure or success, and if you can figure out which one you are afraid of then you can challenge that fear and overcome it. That may very well be true, but I think it’s a little messier than that.
What I mean to say is that, at some point, everyone has the experience of being afraid of failure and, at some point, everyone has the experience of being afraid of success. Maybe you have not thought of it in these terms before, so let me say it another way. Fear of failure is mostly based on past experiences. This is why a child with no concept of what it means to swim will walk right into a pool when it sees others swimming. It has no reason to believe that it can’t swim – no concept of what it means to sink. Afterward, this child will know what it means to fail at swimming and will not want to do that again!
Fear of success, on the other hand, is based on the unknown. It may be as simple as that gut feeling of, “What happens next?” For me, the best example is parenting. When our children were born we had no idea what gender either would be. We wanted it to be a surprise, and we wanted to start out our relationship with them by loving them as they were without expectation. When our daughter was born I was overjoyed! I still remember the first time she wrapped her little fingers around my pinky – and my heart! I was immediately filled with joy and dread over the responsibility of becoming a parent. Likewise, when my son was born, I suddenly began to question all the things that Dads do with boys and wondering if I would ever measure up. It’s silly, but there I was – questioning what it meant to be a man and if I had the right stuff to be the kind of father this kid deserved.
These types of experiences get stored up and banked in our memory. They get expressed in our bodies in our posture and our interactions with others. That doesn’t mean that they control us, or at least, it doesn’t mean that we can’t overcome our fears. There are tons of examples throughout human history of people pushing past their fears, especially when there is something greater than themselves at stake.
One of my favorite examples is Katherine Johnson. She’s one of the three women that inspired the book Hidden Figures (and the film based on it as well), and she is one of many examples of African Americans who have had crucial roles in the development of our nation. While there is still a lot of work to do in our nation in regards to racial inequality – and recognizing the unrecognized is a big part of that work – I bring her up to acknowledge that not only did she have a lot to be afraid of, but her work is what helped others to have hope.
Sometimes having the support of someone else is not only “all we need to get by,” but it is the very thing we need to get by. Remember that fear of parenting thing? Fast forward five years. I was going on a mission trip and would be gone on my daughter’s 5th birthday, so I took her on a special trip to the circus, just the two of us. We got dressed up “all fancy”. I wore a tux and a top hat and she wore a princess dress with a special satin party hat. We were so fancy that some passers-by thought we were in the circus!
After the circus, we accidentally left her hat in the bathroom and had to go back in. By the time we found it and came back out the crowds were gone, it was getting dark, and I had no idea where the parking garage was. The map on my phone showed two different garages, and my battery was dying. To say the least, as we wandered the streets of downtown Savannah, GA after dark, I was terrified. We were a pretty obvious pair and an easy mark for anyone that might be in a desperate situation and making bad choices. As we walked she grabbed my hand and reminded me that everything is more fun when you skip. So we skipped and we sang a song she learned in church, “Be Strong and Courageous!” until we found our car.
To this day she claims that she is the one that found the car, and that’s fine. I may not have found it without her. The thing is, we rarely go it alone, even when we think that we do. There are, of course, decisions that we have to make and actions we have to take, and sometimes we feel like we might as well be walking on a high wire, all alone, with only the somewhat indifferent anticipation of the crowd to hold us.
That same mentor I mentioned before also told me that the only difference between walking a tightrope that is low to the ground or high in the sky is the distance from the ground, but then again, I would argue that the consequence of falling may change things a bit. Maybe that’s why I’m not a tightrope walker. Even so, I would imagine that the only way to remove the consequence of falling – apart from practice and the experience of not falling – is to be focused on the end and to trust in the rope.
Focusing on the destination and trusting in the presence of God has always been the way in which God’s people have overcome their fears – whether it is fear of the past or fear of the unknown future. Take Moses for example. He was a fugitive from the court of the Pharaoh in Egypt – not simply a runaway slave but a fugitive of the court of the Pharaoh!
He had found a pretty nice hideaway with Jethro. He had gotten married and had a solid job. Then God came to him in the form of a burning bush to tell Moses that God knew how bad it was in Egypt. Great! Then God told Moses to go tell Pharaoh to stop being mean, and Moses responds, “Um, yeah...I think you dialed the wrong bush. I am not so good at talking, and they’ll probably kill me on sight.”
It doesn’t really match with Cecil B. DeMille’s version or the actual text for that matter, but I like to think the bush chuckled a bit at that before saying, “Go get your brother, Aaron, and don’t worry – I’ll tell you what to say.”
A generation later we find the Israelites are not only free but formed into a people with law and an army and the opportunity to overthrow kings and kingdoms. I think it’s important to recognize that when God tells Joshua not to be afraid and to be strong and courageous, he’s not looking for his car in a deserted parking garage. This is the moment when the people became a nation. This is the moment when the God of the people of Israel became known as the God who provides and redeems and has the power to build up and to tear down, and if only the people will follow God they will be the ones that demonstrate God’s favor.
While I fully believe that is still true today, I think we have to remember that the point of the conquest of the land of Canna was to establish an understanding of Yahweh God as the one true God. Conquest and dominance were never meant to be an ongoing way – or a pattern of behavior – for God to demonstrate power so much as a means for God to demonstrate that God – the one true God – is active and present and in our midst.
It is, in fact, through Jesus Christ, God turned the tables on what it means to conquer and to live without fear. Through Jesus, God changed the idea of conquest on a cosmic and universal level so that we do not have to keep fighting the same battles over and over and over.
“for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
The gift of faith in Christ is that we do not have to dominate and conquer to demonstrate that God is active and present. We simply have to walk in faith and act out of love.
Like the tightrope walker, we know where we are going – even if sometimes it feels like we are blindfolded – and we can trust in the Lord as we can trust the rope. Like a lost child, we can fold onto the hand of our heavenly Father and even skip and sing in the face of danger. Like the lost parent, we can take joy in the faith of our young ones! Like those who are hidden figures in the fabric of history, we can take joy in those times that we have the privilege of being hidden support for the one God has called to act, and in our success, we can be gracious and thankful for the ones who risked it all to be sure that we had all we needed to get by.
Success and failure still matter, particularly when it comes to practical choices, but our faith gives us a different perspective on what it means to succeed. Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican Ashkenazi poet, essayist, historian and activist. She wrote a poem titled V’ahavta (and you shall love) that I believe demonstrates what God has been encouraging in us all along.
These are just a few excerpts from it, (click here for full text) but I think it gets the idea across...
“Imagine winning. This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child.
It is your child...
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more….
Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live.
Have hope. Live without fear. The Lord is in our midst. Be strong and courageous – now and always. Amen.
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