Fear Not

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Isaiah 40 : 1, 4, 5, 9-11 – Responsive Reading

Is. 40:9 – “O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”

Why does the scripture enjoin me to “be not afraid . . . be not dismayed?”

Because the “good tidings” here are not good tidings to those who love not the Holy One, the one true God, not good tidings to those who have devoted their lives to serve other gods, gods of fear, of selfishness and self-serving motives. The “good tidings,” of their very nature, cannot help but to reveal these false gods: the good news of the unreality of sin (recognized as reality by traditional theology), the good news of the unreality of disease and death (recognized as reality by materialistic science and medicine). Materialistic Science, Theology, and Medicine are the mountains of bad tidings that the good tidings of Christian Science make low and disintegrate.

So it takes courage to proclaim the “good tidings” against the mountains of resistance. It takes “counting the cost” requisite to wage war with 10,000 against an enemy of 20,000. Once empowered, however, I can rise to the awareness that our God is the God of a visible few people teamed with heavenly armies of teeming, invisible multitudes, so that it only appears to mortal-mindedness that we are 10,000 against 20,000.

“One man of you shall chase [rout, put to flight] a thousand: for the LORD your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.” Joshua 23:10

Emboldened, uplifted by this awareness, God will give me new ways (ever-new sharp threshing instruments) to keep up with and meet each new challenge as it arises, new courage to “lift up [my] voice with strength” against it, to bring low these mountains of materialism — first in my life, and then in the world outside, as never before.




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