Fear and Hope

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The fear of God is an awful thing. Stop and think about it for a moment. God has the power to end your existence, simply by willing it. He can crush you like you swat a fly. His judgment is so terrible and so beyond comprehension that it makes the earth itself quake and the seas foam. He makes the foundations of His temple shake, and the angels, His holy servants, hide their faces from Him.

Fear can paralyze and destroy. Luther was deathly frightened of any contact with God before he discovered the Gospel. He thought that God was only a God of wrath and judgment, waiting in heaven to strike down man to hell for failing to keep even the most minute part of the Law. Luther perceived only the sword of the Spirit cutting him apart.

But, as terrible as the fear of the Lord can be, having no fear of God is even worse. Having no fear of judgment leads to lawlessness. What do you do when you think nobody is looking? At the very least, having no fear of punishment leads to laziness, because there is no consequence to not getting anything done.

"O Wondrous Love, What Have You Done!"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Out of the depth I cry to You, O Lord.” This is where the psalmist starts, in the depths of sin and guilt. I know that what the Scripture says is true – in sin did my mother conceive me, and in iniquity was I born. I know that I have not helped matters since then. Instead, I was born into a hole of sin, and have only succeeded in digging it deeper and deeper with the shovel of my own actions and inactions. All the systems and theories and religious ideas of the world have thrown me ropes, but these have only given me length to hang myself.

The further and further down we dig in our own hearts, the more and more we realize that we are blinded by our sinful condition. We turn in circles endlessly in the pit of despair, looking for the way out, only to find that our path has been chasing our own tail. We bumble along, stumbling upon this and that, collecting artifacts from our own broken lives, ignorant both of the problem and the solution. And our pride and stubbornness keeps us from asking for help until we reach the end of the line, until we slam into the brick wall.