Recently, I was asked to review one of Thomas Nelson Publishers latest books by Max Lucado, Fearless. I don't always agree to book reviews, since I have a hard time knowing what to do if I don't like the thing, but I'm familiar enough with Max Lucado to know he's pretty good, so agreed.
Still, the title "Fearless" put me off a bit. I wasn't sure if I needed a book called that. I'm the gal who has learned to be unafraid of snakes (as long as they aren't coming at me) and I find such a fascinating beauty in these gals...
...that I will often put my nose right up to one to study it better. Even in non-physical things, I thought, I'm not too fearful. I've learned through life's hard knocks that most of what we worry over doesn't ever come true.
So I started Max Lucado's book with a this'll-be-good-for-someone sort of attitude. Not for me, but for someone.
But. In chapter 2, I read, "Ah, there it is. There is the question. The Amazon River out of which a thousand fears flow: do we matter?"
Through a poem about The Villagers of Stiltsville and through sentences like, "That's why it bothers us when a friend forgets to call or the teacher forgets our name...," I realized, yep, I do have a bit of fear. I'm forever worrying over other people's happiness when they're around me, and if I'm ever told someone is unhappy with me, I'm absolutely obsessed over how to fix it. Why? I guess it's because I need to matter, too.
The book covers the fears of disappointing God, of not protecting the kids, of violence, of the coming Winter, and of global calamity among others. There are a lot of things to be fearful of, aren't there?
This afternoon, while our ballerina was in class, our little gal and I moseyed on to the town library, but on the way we got a sudden urge to browse an antique shop. Before long, we got to chatting with the store owners, a strongly-accented older couple: he, from London; she, from Germany (they met and married in America!). He remembers watching the Germans bomb London as a small child. She remembers the story her mother told of while pregnant with her, caring for their 4 year old and 8 year old , the family barely survived the bombings from the British that leveled their entire town, killing 18,000 that one day.
They had a reason to fear.
I don't, really, when you put it that way.
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