Be Not Afraid

It's one of the most oft-repeated assurances in all the Bible: 

Be not afraid. 

When we read those words, we think it's a translation issue, some kind of throwback to the King's English that, if we were to re-translate it today, would mean something roughly like "Don't be scared." And so we spend our lives of faith trying not to be scared, telling ourselves we won't succumb to it, putting on a brave face and plastering a blind faith over every situation we face. 

I'm obviously not scared. See? I'm smiling and telling you how good God is. Can't possibly be scared right now. Not me. Nope. 

Which is great, I guess, except that underneath it all, we're still scared. If you were to peel back the layers of our lives and uncover one by one our defense mechanisms, it's not surprising to find that at the very core of us, we're still scared. 

And that means that we're failing at what we think the Bible is telling us to do. Don't be scared? How can I not be scared?

As someone who has spent what seems like an excessive amount of time in her life being scared (admittedly sometimes even for good reason), let me tell you something I've done that has changed my perspective on life: 

I put the emphasis on another syllable. 

Most of us read "Be not afraid," and we think, "Don't be scared." But these days, when I read "Be not afraid," I think "be...not afraid." Be "not afraid." 

Not afraid is a type of courage. It's the willingness to look something scary in the eye and decide...nope. Not gonna be intimidated. Not going to be afraid. It's embracing our own human frailty, knowing we might fail, knowing we might fall, and not letting that be the defining characteristic of this moment. It's looking at the life that's in front of us, knowing what can happen, and doing it anyway. 

Not because we've somehow become unafraid or "not scared," but because we're choosing something different. 

We are literally putting the emphasis on a different syllable in our life as we're living it, and when we do that, there's no place for being afraid. 

I am "not afraid." I am not not...scared. I am choosing "not afraid" as my default position. 

And being "not afraid" lets me choose something else - something like courage. Something like curiosity. Something like adventurous. It lets me choose to feel my own belovedness, the way that God has been merciful and kind to me. It lets me choose to be humbled, to recognize my own strength and depend instead upon God's strength. It lets me see grace in a new way. And healing. And power.

And love. 

What would "not afraid" open up for you in your life if you were to choose it today? What would your life look like with an emphasis on a different syllable? 

What would it take for you to look at a situation, even one in which fear might seem reasonable, and decide...nah. Not it. Not today? 

What would it mean to you to stop trying not to be scared and to simply embrace being not afraid?