Out of Fear

Dear Friends,

One of the few pieces of the Sunday paper I look at before church, besides the headlines, is the comic strip Doonesbury. This week’s strip stopped me in my tracks as it gave voice to one of my secret fears these days that our Korean-born daughter, who has been adopted and naturalized since she was 15 months old, will be stopped with only a driver’s license on hand, and sent to a detention center with our grandchildren in the car. I am sufficiently anxious about this that I have put all plans to move to a Continuing Care Retirement Community on hold so that we have enough money on hand, possibly, to hire a lawyer and get her home. There it is, how in this moment fear can take over your life.

What has kept me sane, has been prayer, a supportive community called Grace, and the determination to model what I preach, to be more than the sum of my worst fears. Bishop Carrie’s recent letter to the Diocese has been balm for my soul in which she invites us in these times to:

“Reach out in our confusion and concern to others; pray together; wonder together; discern together; and do the next right thing.”

Opportunities to do the next right thing are always before me whether it is the volunteers who have turned out to shovel out sidewalks, driveways, or street corners for those who cannot do this work or leaning into conversations with folks who differ from me and yet have so much to give me and others. Those actions along with others call me out of fear and into hope. Hearing how two of our Grace youth participated in the Polar Bear Plunge for Special Olympics, the work that Sadie Altman and Mad Schuster are doing to raise money for blood cancer research remind me how it is important to have hope and to remember that big and little things matter and make a difference for the work of Christ among us. In this year the Gospel of Matthew will remind us often that our faithfulness is seen in the small things we do versus the big things we think God expects.

Be called out of fear. Practice what Bishop Carrie offers as wise counsel. I know that when we do that not only fear is taken away, but the kingdom is also here and now.

God’s peace and keeping,

Mary+