Why faith also involves some fear

Sometimes, we find it difficult to trust God. Did he not, after all, instruct Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac?

If we trust God, might he not entrust us with a task we won’t like? Even Mother Teresa, who famously said that God would not give her anything she could not handle, confided that she wished he did not trust her so much.

Mother Teresa cradles a baby at her order’s orphanage in India in 1978.Credit: AP

It is not difficult to have a strong sense of Jesus and Mary, described so clearly in Bible accounts. The holy spirit as the advocate, the teacher sent to remind the disciples of everything Jesus had said, is also clearly enough depicted.

But we are not always certain about God the father, in case he has a challenge for us that involves suffering. We can spend decades in this state of caution, not quite able to bring ourselves to trust him.

English poet Francis Thompson well described our sometimes wary attitude to God in The Hound of Heaven: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years”.

When we trust God, we are often surprised by peace and comfort.Credit: Supplied

And then: “(For, though I knew His love Who followed,/Yet was I sore adread/ Lest having Him, I must have naught beside). But, if one little casement parted wide,/ The gust of His approach would clash it to./ Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.”

Yet our view of personal freedom is different to God’s. Thompson explains God’s point of view: “All which I took from thee I did but take/Not for thy harms,/But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.”

Sometimes we reach a point where we can hide no longer and nothing is left but to surrender to God, relinquishing our ego and the need to feel in control. When we dare to trust God, handing over our worries and concerns, we are often surprised by a sense of peace and comfort.

One can only wonder what it must be like for God to have any of us, ant-like beings compared to God, rise above our human distractions to seek out God.

It seems presumptuous for us to do so, but it must melt God’s heart that the seed of divinity planted in the human heart is strong enough to make us yearn for the divine.

Perhaps this is part of the test of living; to see whether we can maintain a spiritual self and awareness of God in the face of our busy, practical lives, or whether that spiritual awareness will sink to the level of a dream and disappear entirely.

In both situations, God waits patiently, hoping that we will find him.

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