Today I’d like to talk a little bit about fear. Not in the abstract, but in the all too concrete. To do so, I need to get personal and talk about a recent experience of mine.
I would say I am not generally a fearful person. I don’t go through life worrying about imagined future possibilities. But a couple of nights ago, for some reason, I had a bad night… a night of real fear.
I woke up in the middle of the night, as I sometimes do, but instead of drifting back to sleep I found myself thinking about the recent terror attacks in Paris and the likelihood – if not the certainty – that there will be more and much worse to come.
As I thought about the Middle East, ISIS, the migrant/refugee crisis, and growing social tensions in a number of western nations, my mind began to play out apocalyptic scenarios involving not only terrorist attacks, bombings and the spectre of a group like ISIS obtaining nuclear weapons, but also a total breakdown of law, order and the social fabric within my own country, and all the attendant impacts on home, family… even survival. Try as I might, I could not quiet my thoughts and go back to sleep.
I don’t know how long I was awake; it may only have been an hour or so, but as I laid there in a cold sweat and with my heart pounding, it felt like a lot longer. Then, finally, sleep came and I didn’t wake again until the morning.
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I have been to many places
There are days and seasons when the sun is never far away,
