Do not be afraid

All of us want to be strong. We want to be in con­trol. We want to show oth­ers that we can make it in this world. Unfor­tu­nately, we all have fears too. They may be as a res­ult of bad exper­i­ences or they may just “pop up” one day and catch us off guard. Fears come in all shapes and dimen­sions. It might be a fear of heights or of an anim­al or bug, but whatever your fears may be, they can stop you in your tracks. By defin­i­tion, fear is a dis­tress­ing emo­tion aroused by impend­ing danger, evil, pain, or loss, wheth­er the threat is real or ima­gined. In psy­cho­logy, fear (also para­noia, pho­bia) is per­ceived as a vital response to phys­ic­al and emo­tion­al danger. Often, we fear situ­ations that are far from life or death, and thus, hang back for no good reas­on. Again, trau­mas or bad exper­i­ences can trig­ger a fear response with­in us that is hard to quell. Fear is a power­ful enemy, so we need a power­ful allyto over­come it. For Chris­ti­ans, Jesus and faith in God are those power­ful allies to quell every fear. For fear of the Jews, the dis­ciples locked them­selves up in a room (John 20:19). But with the des­cent of the Holy Spir­it, the apostles became fear­less. Imme­di­ately the Holy Spir­it des­cen­ded on them, they jumped out and star­ted announ­cing the Good News. This was how they were delivered from fear. The fear of being per­se­cuted by the Jew­ish author­ity and of being cajoled by the people. The com­mand to pro­claim on the house-tops everything they have been taught marks the end of secrecy. As the author of the book of Eccle­si­ast­es says, there is right time for everything. Usu­ally, Jesus avoids pub­li­city (cf. Matt 8:4). But now, it is time to go pub­lic. Hav­ing pre­pared the dis­ciples, Jesus can now send them out and allow them to announce from the house­tops, the truth and the Gos­pel he has explained to them. If he has taught them in the dark (secretly), that is, only to the Jews, they should now expose those teach­ings to the light (openly), that is, even to the Gentiles.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPY OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vol. I)!! The reflec­tion for the 12^th Sunday is found on pages 342–348. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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