News stories about shootings in theaters, malls, restaurants, schools, and churches can easily make us fearful and paranoid about we or our families going anywhere, and fearful and paranoid about strangers.
But too much fear prevents us from relying on God as our Fortress. We can die any day or any night from terrorists' bullets, accidents, or illness. We need to ALWAYS be ready to die. And be able to overcome fear if a stranger genuinely needs us.
Do we have faith that God will protect us until it is our time to join Him? Do we have faith that no matter how and when we die, God will prepare us beforehand? Surely our black brothers and sisters shot in their church were spiritually ready to join their Lord. How do I know? Because their families and church members knew how to confront the killer, how to pray for his soul, how to forgive him. That is the Spirit of God alive in a community. That is the Spirit of God alive in us. Everyday we can pray to God, asking that if this is our day to die, He will forgive our sins and come for us.
Advertisements that urge us to be the ultimate consumers, and showcase expensive homes, cars, clothing, jewelry, and techno marvels, can shake us out of our humble contentment with the lifestyle we have. If we become envious, make comparisons, waste useless time and energy either wanting what we can't have, or plotting how to get it, we have become shaken in our faith, and God is no longer our Fortress.
Do we believe that where our hearts are, that's where our treasure is? If we don't acknowledge that God is our Supreme Treasure, then we will create false gods for ourselves: money, power, possessions. We need to take refuge in God our Fortress until the storms of competitive consumerism pass us by.
Stories about ecological disasters can shake us, either make us want to bury our heads in the sand and believe nothing will happen, or be so paralyzed by fear that we can do nothing. But religious leaders around the globe are urging all of us to take action. Christians are born optimists because we believe God is our Fortress Who protects us and acts for us. We also believe, from the Creation story in Genesis that He gives us intelligence to act and protect all creation.
If we have deep faith, we also have deep love for this world God has given us and we grieve for the way human beings have despoiled and are destroying Natural habitats. Great faith, great grief, great love urge us to ask God for wisdom and then choose a specific way to become ecologically savvy and responsible.
Has economic insecurity shaken our faith in God? Financial analysts scare us by telling us that we have to have so much money squirreled away in case we have a financial catastrophe. Do we consciously hold on to every cent that we make, fearful that one day we won't have enough if we share any of our money?
But, - God is our Fortress. God promises that He will never be outdone in generosity. Jesus Himself praised the poor woman who gave away all that she had.
Recently a lady checking out my groceries at Wegman's told me how she was buying food for the poor every time she shopped because she remembered a difficult time when her husband left her, and she promised her children "You will never go hungry and you will never freeze to death." She and her family survived, so now she is helping others. She knows through personal experience what it is to need help. She got it, so she is paying it forward.
Do we need to suffer ourselves in order to understand human need? Or is it enough that God asks us to help our brothers and sisters? Do we trust that our Fortress will be there for us if we overcome financial anxiety and learn to be generous?
Every day the world conspires to shake us from our faith in God. We are shaken by unexpected attacks on people's physical safety, shaken by our inability to socially "keep up" with others in the world of possessions and fashion, shaken by the assaults on the whole world's ecology, shaken by economic and financial insecurity.
Every time that we give in to any type of fear, we forget our faith in God as our Fortress, and we forget that He alone is our Heart's Treasure. God's power can overcome any fear that shakes us. God Himself is the measuring stick of all our wants and needs. God's Love for all should be what propels us forward to share what we have.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the pure of heart. Blessed are the humble. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness. Jesus' counter-cultural message of the Beatitudes teaches us to seek our real identity in the One Who created us rather than in the world that seeks to shake our faith in God our Fortress and make us over in its own distorted, isolationist, selfish and materialistic image.