Musings062710,Are Your Fears Too Much? by John

"Fear not..." Jesus said a number of times in the Gospels, yet most of us today fear often. Some live in a state of fear because of their government or because of their enemies. Some fear for no known reason at all.

All Israel feared the Philistines, particularly Goliath. David didn't, and God made him capable of providing a victory that gave Israel the encouragement needed to overcome the Philistines and their fear.

When we say people intimidate us, we are really saying we are afraid of them. Goliath's size intimidated the Israelites. Sometimes we are intimidated by the size of a house or car payment. One of the biggest fears brought on by our own appetites is credit card indebtedness.

It's a different source, but many fear global warming. Others fear population explosion. Still others fear what will happen if the opposing party gets the Presidency or a majority in House or Senate.

Still others of us constantly worry because we are afraid we aren't keeping up our public image. That's what makes the British comedy, "Keeping Up Appearances," so popular. We see ourselves in it. Still others are afraid their past will be found out.

All of these fears are very real, even the ones that are real only in our minds. We need to deal with them, but some are extremely hard to deal with. I suspect Joan D' Arc experienced fear in battle, in ecclesiastical court and while being burned at the stake. I guess we will never know for sure, but put yourself in her place. Wouldn't you be afraid? Wouldn't you dread what you knew was going to happen next? I am sure I would. Something like that can only be experienced. Someone else is handling it.

The Old Testament tells us numbers of times that the Lord caused great fear to fall on Israel's enemies. I doubt any of those enemies could handle their fear at all, but what about us. Can we handle our fears?

I read recently that a hero is someone who in spite of danger, or his fear, accomplishes what needs to be done. One of my seminary professors who had cancer wrote a book about facing our fears. The cancer took his life, but he was victorious over his fears.

His life was in the wonderfully capable hands of God! And that's the greatest remedy for fear! Do you suppose that is sufficient?

Jesus told those who followed and loved Him many times to not be afraid. On one of those occasions, He said, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28). A healthy fear of God is right. In this instance, fear means holy awe. God is the Eternal Creator, and in the verses following, Jesus told them His Father set a high value on each one of us. John3: 16 tells us God loves His whole creation so much that He sent Jesus to die in our place, so that we never will die spiritually. We will spend eternity with God as His children according to Romans 8:16,17, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." If that doesn't convince us, I Thessalonians tells us the resurrection will take place, and, "After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever."
Fear is awesome in its power to rob us of our happiness and of our power to accomplish so many things in life, but the answer to it all is in Jesus. He is our life, and when we consciously place our trust in Him, He lifts us up and holds us in His hand as He tells us in John 10:27-30, "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

When Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you will still experience fear for sundry reasons, but regardless of the danger you will be safe forever!

Musing050410, God is light by John

I John 1:5 says, "God is light; and in him there is no darkness at all."

God is spoken of as Light. Darkness, usually represents sin, rebellion, etc. in both the New and Old Testament. God is Spirit, and there is no comparison for Him.

Physical light has aspects that remind us of God. It's a fact that light is so unusual as to be an enigma to many because we haven't been able to plum the depths of it. For instance, scientists have discovered how glowworms and fireflies produce light by chemical reaction and can reproduce it. Human beings discovered ages ago that fire emitted light. From the beginning of our race, we have known the Sun, Moon and Stars are visible to us, but most us don't stop to realize that we only see light, not dark. Later in time, some of those heavenly specks were determined to be planets with no light of their own. They reflect light from other sources, mainly a star called a sun, but perhaps from more than one sun.

Still later, a technical team measured the speed light traveled in a vacuum at 286,200 miles per second. After that discovery, astronomers began to measure the distance to stars using the distance light could travel in a year. That works out to be 6 X 10 to the twelfth power, or 6,000,000,000,000 miles.

Other scientists worked with how we see light. We hear people say, "Put it down in black and white!" That may be used in reference to most anything, but usually it means to make something extremely clear and concrete. Our eyes see black when there is an absence of light, and in God's nature artists tell us there is no such thing as black. If you can see it, it has light in it. So where do all the colors come from? The answer of course is white. Looking at a rainbow reveals the light colors our eyes can see. When the different wavelengths of light are separated, we see those differences as colors starting with red and moving through the spectrum to bright blue/violet. Scientists discovered that all materials absorb various waves lengths of light, and those that are reflected to our eyes are one or more of the colors we recognize. Yep! Light is made up of waves of energy. The waves are of different length and they are traveling through air/space at different frequencies. When we see red, we are seeing the longest wavelength. It is about 780 nm in length. The shortest wavelength belongs to violet. It ranges between 455 and 390 nm. All the other visible colors have wavelengths between these in the order we see in a rainbow.

Light also has frequency, too. All of the visible colors fall between red beginning at 384 THz and ending with violet at about 769 THz. The latter means it changes from positive to negative 769, 000,000,000,000 times per second.

Most everyone knows our eyes are receivers of light, and cameras work something like our eyes do, but our eyes are so much more efficient. Some might doubt that, but it is a point I don't argue perhaps because my own eyes have been failing for many years.

I really enjoyed summertime when I was a child, and one of my favorite toys was a fine magnifying glass. I could see things with it that my myopic eyes could not see without it, but there was more. I could burn my name into a piece of paper using the light from the sun concentrated by that lens. I never dreamed that one day people would develop lasers. Laser is a coined word made up of most of the first letters of this phrase: Light Amplification Stimulated by Emission of Radiation. Laser beams can be narrow. Many of us have either used, or seen others use, a laser device as a pointer, but there are other lasers that deliver wide beams with a variety of colors. The intensity of laser beams have the power to cut through metal, and can be sensitive enough to reattach a torn retina in the back of a human eye.

Frequently we think of our eyes as being able to see certain distances. I once asked a fifth grade class how far they could see. Their answers ranged from five to twenty miles. I then asked how far the Sun was from the earth. Hands shot up, because we had just covered that in class. I asked if they could see that far, and the "light" of understanding sparkled in their eyes. One suddenly burst out with, "We can see a lot farther than that!" They began to realize their eyes were more like cameras than ray guns, and like cameras our eyes do not see all there is in light. We do see blends of the different frequencies. Yellow and blue blend to make green. Red and yellow produce orange, Blue and red produce violet, and yet with all the billions of blends, there are still other sorts of light.

Some glasses are treated to keep out UV, that's ultra-violet light. Invisible Black light is used to light up florescent materials in art displays, etc. The heat from light travels from the sun to us without losing any of its power. We would burn without the insulating effect of our planet's air diffusing that powerful light. Can you begin to see how something as simple as light is actually almost, if not, beyond our ability to know and understand? For instance, almost all if not all materials if heated sufficiently produce light. God is light.... Does that light show how much God has put Himself into our very creation?

God has told us He is all-powerful, omnipresent, omnipotent, and that his ways are higher than our ways. Yet, He loves us. That is incomprehensible to me. I accept it by faith, and He has stated in His Word, "If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God, and so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." (I John 4:15-16) Light is just one of His magnificent gifts of love to us. It challenges our understanding, and our Heavenly Father challenges our faith. We can understand what He does for us, but we will not fully understand Him until we stand in His presence as I Corinthians 13: 12 says, "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully know."