There are times when we experience fear and trepidation the moment we set out to do something–especially what we’re good at. What to do?
I awoke, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people Who have set themselves against me all around.
Psalm 3:6
That Fear That Grips
I was talking to a friend of mine a while ago. We were talking about how we used to serve the homeless, and how long it’s been, and how much we miss it. Now he’s got a place downtown, and there are many homeless around his building.
But then he said this …
“I want to serve them but I am afraid. I don’t know what it is, but I am afraid to serve them—something is holding me back …”
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but then later in the day I was talking to another friend. And as we always do, we were ‘getting into the issues’, and somehow got on the subject of spiritual warfare, and the battles we encounter. In that moment I recalled my difficulties when sitting down to write: fear, despair, despondency, and sloth. … I know how to write, and I’ve been writing for decades, so it’s not a struggle within me—it’s a struggle outside of me.
And then I recalled my friend’s struggle with serving the homeless around his apartment building. If there’s anyone I know who serves the homeless so humbly and fervently, it’s my friend. His struggle to serve is not inside him, but outside of him—a battle he must take up Christ to fight, as is my writing or my own fear of serving.
Those Times of Pruning
This is what I noticed about our callings in life—the call to serve, the call to love, the call to write or teach—that at times God allows us to be tempted and even placed under attack so we can really see and know and understand our feebleness in ourselves. Why? So we can truly be His and so He can truly use us; that we become the work of Art He sees in us.
On the other side are the fallen angels, the enemy, that do not hesitate to attack us out of malice and hatred, and their utter terror and despair and humiliation and shame. Tolkien knew what he was doing when he created the orcs as fallen distorted disgraced elves. The orcs who resent that they can never become elves again.
Merton On The Suffering Of Vocation
Merton says it beautifully …
If we are called to the place in which God wills to do us the most good, it means we are called where we can best leave ourselves and find Him. The mercy of God demands to be known and recognized and set apart from everything else and praised and adored in joy. Every vocation is therefore at once a vocation to sacrifice and to joy. It is a call to the knowledge of God, to the recognition of God as our Father, to joy in the understanding of His mercy. …
But then he adds this …
That does not mean that our individual vocation selects for us a situation in which God will become visible to the eyes of our human nature and accessible to the feelings of our heart and flesh. On the contrary, we are called where we will find Him we must go where flesh and blood will lose Him, for flesh and blood cannot possess the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50). God sometimes gives Himself to us where He seems to be taken away. …
In that moment when God becomes as it were ‘lost to us’, we can serve Him out of the poverty of our being …
And there I will be most free to praise Him, even though my praise may be lowly and inarticulate and unworthy and poor. It will be most free, most mine, most Christ’s. It will be the praise He seeks for me.
—No Man’s an Island, pp. 138-39
We are called to those places where we can best leave ourselves to find God. Our vocation, then, is a call to sacrifice and joy. That means that in doing what we’re good at we need to be reminded that our strengths and talents and giftings come from Him, and that He wants to use those things for our healing and restoration and for His glory and for the life of the world. And that means at times being pruned, for things to be cut away, for situations to arise that plunge us into despair and in which we realize our only help in times of tribulations is God and God alone. Our vocations are places in which we are called to suffer more effectively because the suffering is part of the sacrifice to God.
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom On The Suffering Of Love
What Merton writes about suffering and our vocation brings me to an interview I recently re-listened to: Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on CBS, 3 May 1973. In the following excerpt of the interview, Metropolitan Anthony responds to the interviewer’s comments about a previous interview he did with Elie Wiesel, the humanitarian and author of a number of books about the Holocaust, including the very popular book entitled ‘Night’. Wiesel had stated in that interview that in Judaism suffering is useless and alien to what they believe. “Life should be a celebration, should be joy. And suffering has no redemptive power as far as he [Wiesel] was concerned.” The interviewer (Roy) asked Metropolitan Anthony (MA), “Does God want us to suffer?”
MA: “I would say … He wants us to love, not to suffer. But suffering is always inherent to love in a world which is disharmonious, ugly, violent, aggressive, and so forth. He does not want us to suffer. He wants us to love. Yet, He warns us love means death, the shedding of blood—heart blood or physical blood. [In such a world] suffering [which is inevitable] is a fact. And it can be turned into a redemptive experience.”
Roy: “Is the notion that suffering is redemptive unique to the Christian faith?”
MA: “Well for one thing, suffering, in itself, is not redemptive. Suffering is redemptive only if it is connected with love and when suffering is a result of giving one’s life or giving something of oneself. In itself as such may be a curse and a hell without any issue out of it. But I think that this being said it is true that suffering when endured in the name of love and for the sake of love, ultimately for the sake of God and man, in a personal way is redemptive. … St Paul made it perfectly clear when he said that if we don’t suffer the right way, we suffer in vain. And also in the epistle to the Corinthians when he speaks of love and says that even if I gave my body to be burned but have no love it would be vain and empty.”
So in those moments when fear grips at a point of entering into something that we are good at, or in those moments of despair and despondency, when God doesn’t seem close to us, we can trust in God’s love. A little suffering for the sake of others is a good thing—if there is love. This is the suffering and joy Merton talks about related to our vocation—the suffering and joy that is redemptive when we give ourselves in love to God. For to think we’re doing our vocation in our own strength, for our own selves, in our own pleasurable way—or even being in a funk for our own sake—is out of a love for self, for ego, and not out of love for God.
For “if I am called to the solitary life it does not necessarily mean that I will suffer more acutely in solitude than anywhere else: but that I will suffer more effectively. And for the rest, I will find there a greater joy because I shall know God in my sacrifice. In order to do this, I will not be too much aware of myself or my sacrifice”(No Man’s an Island, 139).
St Antony the Great dealt with fear in a very intense way—literal demons would attack him and beat him up and leave him for dead.
His remedy …
“Always breathe Christ. For you know the treachery of the demons, how fierce they are, but how little power they have. Therefore fear them not, but rather ever breathe Christ and trust Him.”
May we pursue the work of God with humility and courage, knowing that He is with us and goes before us, and will drive away our enemies–especially in those moments when we feel an uncanny sense of fear. Know that it is the enemy, and immediately turn to the Lord–say His name, “Lord Jesus Christ …” and He will set you free!
