With all the bad news about Ebola and ISIS, my mind turns to words of assurance from folks who knew about suffering in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. Psalm 121 says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills — from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth…. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.”
My other go to text for fearful times is Romans 8. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (vss. 35-39).
May that peaceful assurance calm our fears and guide our actions in these trying times.
Peacefully Harsh 