Category: understanding the past

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This WILD Joy.

I was in a dark place at age 19. I felt like a prisoner. But one afternoon as I searched a mountain for blackberries, I paused to look around. For some reason, my heart leapt with a wild kind of joy.

I immediately corrected myself. Such an irrational wild joy was simply a figment of my imagination. It was an escapist emotion to protect me from harsh realities.

But now, decades later, I discover that there are several Bible words for joy.* One is agalloasis – a WILD JOY.

God gave it to Jesus when he anointed him “with the oil of [wild] joy” (Hebrew 1:9). And Jesus gave it to his followers, as they “ate together with [wild] joy and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:46).

And he gives it to us, for we can stand “before his glorious presence without fault and with [wild] joy” Jude 1:24.

Oh, to embrace this in our hearts…

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com

* research from https://biblehub.com/greek/20.htm

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What really is fear?

It always amazes me how new insights can come years after a situation has passed…

I grew up with a lot of fear, and have worked hard over the decades to overcome it. Yet, a stark reality hit home as I read Proverbs 29:25, “Fear of man will prove to be a snare.”

The Bible called my past fears exactly what they were – traps. For this is what fear does – it captures us, makes us a prisoner, and we can’t escape.

But as I read the next part of that verse, I saw the key to that trap, one which took me years to find – “but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.” For a trap has NO power as we trust in God. Our escape is real.

Photo by Folco Masi on Unsplash