December 24, 2021

“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”  Luke 2:10 (KJV)

Life is a scary thing.  As much as we hate to admit it, there are many things in this world that bring fear into the heart of a man.  A knock on the door at 1:00 AM.  A Doberman Pincher that comes running at you, barking with teeth gnashing.  A letter in the mail from the I.R.S.. Psychologists have diagnosed hundreds of phobias.  You name it, there is probably someone who is fearful of it.

The greatest fear of man, however, is the fear of death.  It is a fear that is literally a fear to end all fears.  Since the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, our mortality became a source of incredible fear.  This fear in a way becomes a root for most other fear.  I, for instance, don’t have a fear of falling, I fear hitting the ground.  The fear of water, snakes, flying, and countless other phobias all finds their root in the fear of death.

For thousands of years fear had dominated man.  On that first Christmas Eve the shepherds were sitting silently in the field.  All of a sudden the dark of the night was shattered by the Glory of the Lord.  The shepherds were in the presence of an Angel.  At that moment they were intensely reminded of their mortality, “and they were sore afraid.”

The Angel broke the silence with a message that still rings truth today, “FEAR NOT!”.  It was a message for all, for that is why Christ had come.  To take away the sins of the world and along with them their fears.  As the writer of Hebrews writes  Jesus became flesh to,  “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Hebrews 2:15 (NIV) 

Heed the message of the Angel and experience the freedom that comes from the absence of fear.  For the absence of fear will bring “Joy to Your World!”