the rambling missionary

by erika haveman

I love reading historical non-fiction, and even the occasional historical fiction if it’s base on true events.  Ken Follett is hands down my favourite historical fiction writer and I recently finished his Century Trilogy.  I wouldn’t say I highly recommend the series due to the fact by Edge of Eternity he at times seems desperate to add a sexual innuendo or encounter at the end of every piece of storyline and it makes for what I would call compromised story telling.  However I would still recommend the books (coming in at over 1000 pages each) if you’re interested in understanding what it felt like to live through WW1, WW2 and the Cold War as each book chronicles stories of people who lived through such times.  Edge of Eternity, while blighted by the aforementioned sexual scenes, is set during the Cold War with storylines taking place in Washington following a young Black man working for Bobby Kennedy and fighting to get the new civil rights bill passed; in San Francisco following the sexual revolution; in Moscow following the crumbling Communist republic; and in Germany following a family torn apart because of the Berlin Wall.

As I was reading through a scene in East Berlin in Edge of Eternity I paused at one point to text my dad.  In the early 80s he had moved to West Germany to teach at a public school for children of Canadian Military personnel.  He had told me a story once of attending a teachers conference in East Berlin, behind the Iron Curtain of course, and he’d gotten sick and stayed back at his hotel one day.  While in his room he received a call from the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, asking him why he was in his room, how he was feeling, how he got sick, etc…  I can only imagine the fear he must have felt in that moment even though he was doing nothing wrong.  How bizarre it must have been to live in a world where the government follows up with innocent people simply because there’s an overarching issue (at the time it was Communism) that is dictating how people need to live their life.

That’s when it struck me: we are living in a time when an overarching issue is dictating how people live their lives.  It is bizarre the governments are contacting people upon entry to their country to ask how you are feeling, if you are sick, how you are getting food, etc…  And you know what?  Those calls induced fear in me.

Yoda once said, “Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering.”

We live in a world, right now, where I can see fear taking hold.  It’s leading us to live tense.  It’s putting us on edge.  It’s leading our minds down rabbit holes that just aren’t likely to be played out in real life.  Yoda was right: our fear is leading us to suffer.

No, COVID is not Communism, or Socialism before that, or more recently something like 9/11.  But the fear that each of those historical events has inspired is very real and fear is fear.  It pushes us apart.  And I don’t know about you but I don’t want to give power to something that pushes me away from the people I love and care for the most.  I want to give power to the things that will draw us closer and make us better together.  Disclaimer: I will still do whatever it takes and will follow any government enforced policies.  How I respond to those policies – with fear or with love – is the important decision to consider.  If I do not consciously make a choice then my default will be fear because I am broken and live in a broken world.

When I was texting with my dad recently he shared with me that he had a fever and headache.  He was going to get a COVID test.  Sometime between feeling ill and getting the test his 87 year old father stopped by for coffee.  After his dad left my dad started to fear that he may have just exposed my Opa to COVID19 and then worried that he might be the one responsible for causing the death of my Opa.  You guys this kind of bunny trail fear – or what we could call suffering – is NOT okay.  We need to stop living in such fear.

When my dad told me that story my only response was this: “History lives to repeat itself.  The devil exists to spread fear.  Thank goodness we find ourselves in Advent where we can look ahead to the faithful appearing of Jesus who came and conquered things like fear.”  

His coming and humanity changed everything.  This has been my tagline for Advent this year: The humanity of Jesus changes everything.  Including changing my fear to confidence.

There is nothing wrong with feeling fear – that only makes us human.  But to stay in our fear, to let it lead us to anger and hate and suffering, is not okay.  We need to let fear challenge us to open our palms to heaven and surrender to the perfect love of Christ and the reality we are not in control but we know, or can know, the One who holds it all together.

God did not give us a spirit of fear or timidity but of power, love and self control.  When I fear COVID and its destruction that truly is wreaking havoc in our world, not just in lives lost but in lives transformed to living in fear, I need to choose the power of the empty grave, the love of Christ on the cross, and the self control God had to have in order to come as a baby in a dirty, smelly manger from the womb of a woman shunned by society.  I need to choose Jesus or fear will choose me.

Fear does not own me though it may have me for a minute.  Jesus owns me and all the minutes He has me overlaps with those fear takes which means I’m never left in unsafety.  Jesus has you, too, and wants nothing more for you to know more intimately today than yesterday His overwhelming love for you and how His humanity really, truly, absolutely, without a doubt in my mind has changed everything.