The Day Fear Died

“Hey you, come over here! Are you deaf?”

I was shivering from the very core of my being. Is he really calling me? He had called many like that in the past and they never came back. Since the crowd was really thick, I didn’t want to believe it was me he called.

“My case is different”… my heart silently whispered. A cliche phrase I had heard so much. But then, my head argued with my heart…

“Your case? Are you kidding? Did you forget brother Coward yesterday? He was more spiritual than you are, yet he was dealt with. Also, sister Last time suffered a fate that nobody saw coming after she was called.”

My heart skipped a beat… My eyes gradually welled up with tears.

“Are you deaf?” He screamed in my direction. I refused to turn around. I’m a Christian, I can’t suffer the popular fate.

“Jesus died at 33” …the whisper came again. That quiet evil voice whispered, quoting the Bible…

“No servant is greater than his master.”

I seemed to crumble under that weight….

I heard the footsteps of Fear approaching, and I turned to look. Like Lot’s wife, I simply just…

He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out. He singled me out of the crowd, and my heart jumped into my mouth.

“Now, I’m about to bring mockery to the name of Christ. Younger girls will see my failure and renounce my Jesus. My faith can’t stand against fear”…I quietly said to myself.

“You will run an errand for me.” Fear bellowed at me. “You’ll help me show the world that waiting for God is a waste of time.” My teeth were chattering as he spoke. My hand was misbehaving inside my mouth. I made incoherent sounds.

“You have failed!” He screamed again. This time the tears became a river and I just allowed it to flow.

Just like I thought, I saw the crowd looking at me with different reactions.

“God, is this how I will eventually fail too?” I asked.

I heard the cry of a young woman from the crowd, the first crowd that caught my eyes…the younger ones who waited for my story to become their ladder…

Some glances said, “You are a disgrace to grace. Where is your faith in a time like this? This only happened to you because you lacked faith.”

My heart was stabbed by that thought.

I shifted my eyes away to another group. “I have been there before. This is the moment when you agree with the rest of us that religion is only opium and nothing more.” Just as I was about to give up, I saw that last group… Just a few people were in it…

“Stop fighting! The battle was won before you were born!” This was their reaction.

I stopped….

I thought….

I remembered….

Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, David, The Shunamite, Daniel, Mary… My heroes. Their faces seemed to pass through my mind in that moment.

“Get up! I’ll kill you!” Fear raised me off the ground, and he screamed his loudest in my ears again and again…I got tired of his screams when I paid attention to the tense of the statement. So I asked…

“When?” My voice was soft and shaky but it cut through his shouts…

“What did you say to me? ” He asked me angrily.

I was becoming bolder, and I wondered what happened to me…

“When will you kill me? ” I asked Fear.

He looked confused and dumbfounded as one who skipped English classes in elementary school.

He stared at me in his gigantic hand, and I gradually regained my stamina as Fear became afraid.

The crowd was silently watching.

My heart was silently listening.

My head was silently humbled.

Fear was silent.

He carefully placed me down, and I regained my voice…

“You want to kill me in this future when I died to the flesh in my past; how will that work?”

“The Only Book says I overcame, and that The Son set me free indeed… in the past. How can you kill me now?” I was now bold to the point of gesticulations.

The truth is, at that point, I had given up my fear of death! I wasn’t sure how it would end, I just suddenly became fully persuaded I won this battle over 2000 years ago, irrespective of what happened.

Then, a miracle happened…My eyes were opened to the truth. Fear wasn’t real; he was a robot. It had been programmed to say and do evil for so long. Only words from That Book, the Holy Book, could make it act otherwise.

“Fear is not real!” I exclaimed to the large crowd.

“But it looks so real,” Someone retorted.

“Yes, but no matter how real fear looks, it is an abstract entity that loses its power when confronted by the Truth.”

Finally, I faced the robot called Fear and recited…

“Whosoever the Son sets free is free indeed.”

With that, the giant robot fell and crumbled into several pieces

As I walked away, I heard that familiar bellow again…

“Hey you, come over here! Are you deaf?”

A new manlike Fear robot called out to another believer.

I made to go rescue him, but Jesus said in my heart, “Let each man bear his burden. This is a battle that cannot be leased out. You can only pray that he acts right.”

I walked ahead, silently praying in my heart that all believers will come to understand this:

We won the battle against all fears before we were formed in our mother’s womb through the power that raised Jesus from the dead.