fear deceitful. Love is brave, fear afraid. And love is strong, while fear is weak.
For as long as we exist on this earthly planet, love and fear will be at war. There is no harmony to be found between the two. But though they may do battle over and over again, love’s victory is written in the stars. For love is God, and God is love, and both are omnipotent.
Later that year, on the Feast of the Holy Family, Dan handed me another letter for my See’s candy box. This one told the story of a family that was still young and had much to learn, but was working hard every day to choose love over fear and because of it had never been happier:
So, here on the Feast of the Holy Family, we heard in Mass how, after Jesus was born, an angel told Joseph to take his little family and live in Egypt so King Herod would not find them. They were there for about a year or two before Herod died and they could safely return to Joseph’s home in Nazareth.
And what did they do in Egypt? No one knows. But I know what we would have done, if it had been us. Knowing that we couldn’t leave — not yet — because God needed us to stay there for a little while, I would have gotten a job teaching theology. We would have chosen a small mud and brick house in the subsuburbs where our neighbors periodically crept by quietly on chariots and sketched drawings of our house to turn in to the neighborhood housing board as proof that we weren’t combing the sand on our property as often as everybody would like.
It would never rain, we would be exhausted and overworked, we would never see our families back in Palestine, and we would rarely have any shekels to spend since theology teachers don’t make much.
But we would settle in. And Christmas would come. And I would fret a little about how few presents we could buy. But you know what? I would be happy. I would be happier than I’d ever been in my life. How would that be possible?
The broad answer is that all things are possible for God. More specifically, I would look at our Christmas tree, festooned with baubles and glistening with colored lights (a miracle, and not because no one had discovered electricity, but because we had not paid our power bill and our service had not been disconnected). I would see the lights gleaming in the eyes of our children who, for all our lack of shekels, looked somehow healthy, and warm, and well-fed. I would look at my wife, plump with a new baby, smiling her beautiful smile, holding wrapped presents for the kids. I would smell baked pies and peppermint and chocolate, and drink wine, and kiss my wife on her soft, full lips and think what a magnificent thing it was that God had brought so much out of an exile in the desert.
That’s how it would be with us, if an angel told us we had to go to Egypt. Thank God we get to stay here.
Dan and Hallie were back. They had much to learn and many mountains yet to climb, but they were back.
Trail Mix
But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.
~ Francis Chan
If you’ve never been to Alabama in the summer — never had your glasses fog up the minute you stepped out your front door, wondered whether you had merely imagined that phenomenon known as “wind,” or had your makeup literally melt off your face — you should know that it is hot. And humid. And possibly not fit for human habitation. Which is not to say that I don’t have a soft spot for it in my heart, because I most definitely do, but — oh my word — is it hot.
Even by Alabama standards, though, it was scorching the day I buckled my four young children into their car seats and headed for Point Clear. We were on our way to the Grand Hotel, where my mother, caring more about spending time with her grandchildren than, say, actually surviving to see her sixtieth birthday, was waiting for us to join her.
We were about pull onto I-10 and head across Mobile Bay when something on the side of the road caught my eye. Unthinkingly, or perhaps prompted by a force I could not see, I pulled over.
I put my car into park and took my foot off the brake. Less than ten yards away from me were three men in long heavy gray robes. They appeared to be perched quite contentedly in the blazing sun atop a guard rail. They turned their heads in my direction, and as their eyes met mine, their faces broke into wide, ebullient smiles.
I got out of my car and walked over to them. They introduced themselves to me, sharing that they were friars from a small Dominican community in France called The Little Brothers of the Lamb. I’ve always had an affinity for French people, having no small amount of French blood running through my own veins, and was tickled to hear the signature French lilt that marked the edges of their vowels. They were on their way, they said, to help the Little Sisters of the Lamb build a monastery in Kansas City and, having taken a vow of extreme poverty, were at the mercy of whatever motorists offered to take them a few miles down the road.
I laughed and said that while I would have loved to be able to help them, I was headed in the opposite direction. Their faces lit up with childlike glee, they grabbed their backpacks, and, talking over one another like giddy children, all assured me that it was no problem at all because they had every faith that I’d been sent by God and that their next ride was waiting wherever I dropped them next.
These days I drive an enormous van that can fit all nine of our family members (plus another handful of poor souls who make the questionable decision to travel with us), but back then I drove a very small two-door Saturn that already had four children stuffed into it. I was about to stammer an apology in the hopes of stopping them in their enthusiastic tracks when all of a sudden I remembered a story that I’d read about Mother Angelica, the nun who founded the international television network EWTN with not a penny to her name and no media experience.
Before she had a television network, she was called by God to start a small publishing house that printed short pamphlets of an evangelical nature. Somehow she’d gotten her hands on a small printing press that was to be delivered to her monastery. When the men delivering the printing press arrived, they took one look at Mother Angelica’s entryway, pulled out their measuring tapes to confirm, and told her that, sadly, the printing press wouldn’t fit through her door.
Not being a woman easily deterred, she responded, “Well, of course it will fit through my door! God sent it to me!” She told the men that she and her sisters were going to go to the chapel to pray for God’s assistance and that she had every faith (and expectation) that when they returned, the printing press would be inside her building.
They tried to argue with her, but she would have none of it, turned on her heel, and marched to the chapel. There she told God that she would need him to temporarily change the laws of physics so that his gift could be put to good use, please and thank you. When she returned, sure enough, the printing press was in the building and the men left utterly speechless for they had no explanation for how they’d managed to get that printing press through her door. But Mother Angelica knew. God had worked a little miracle just for her and just as she knew he would.
I glanced at my tiny car, looked at the three full-grown men happily ambling in its direction, and thought, “Okay, God. If you want me to give these men a ride, you make them fit.” Somehow I knew that he would.
There are moments in life, rare moments, when the Holy Spirit descends and suggests so strongly that you do something that the space between your will and God’s becomes startlingly thin. Sometimes I can’t help but think that
