Reach into fear and reach God

Artist: Constant Dutilleux
Image from Wikimedia Commons

I am bringing you this single paragraph from an Advent sermon I found specifically because of the last sentence. C.S. Lewis once said that fear should not be seen as a sin but rather as an affliction. I agree. And here is a remedy - or at least a way of accepting and managing that affliction with the help of God:

[Last Sunday's gospel reading] challenges us, during this Advent season, to live as people who expect God to be near, and that God is doing something new in our lives. In this Advent season of preparation, the time of Christ's coming into the world, we are to live as if we expect just that. Christ's coming. What does that mean to our daily lives? That means we are to see the worries in our lives as possibilities. We are to look anew on the people and situations that trouble us as signs of God's near and living presence. That we can look at the dark skies and the dark places as moments of waiting and anticipating God's nearness. This means that we don't have to be bound by our fear, by we can reach into fear and reach God.

-- from a sermon by The Rev. Carol J. Gallagher