Regina 
The waitress came and took our order. We sipped on large glasses of clean water and glanced intermittently at the football game plastered across big screens, a rare thing for us. The kids played with the restaurant chalkboards. Our youngest ate a piece of chalk. My eyes caught another screen, and this one showed national news. The headline was startling.
Air strike at Syrian hospital kills 12.
I try to make sense of this reality. I sit to eat and drink in relative safety while my neighbors live out the worst parts of our nightmares. Only it’s not a dream; it’s real harsh scary reality. Children the same age as my children are standing alone in the middle of the street. Our wood-fired pizza comes. I wonder if I can eat, wonder if I should, wonder how I would feel knowing my global neighbors are living in ease while I flee for my life. This world is scary. It’s undeniable.
I read headlines about the ineffectiveness of mammograms, pray for a sweet woman I barely know who got the diagnosis we never want to hear, remember the people in our city who don’t have a place to lay their heads… my heart wrestles to make sense of all this bad news. The difficulties of life rush over us like a relentless wave, like the storm barreling toward Mexico. The hardships have come. They are coming, and they wont be stopped. This is way of a world broken by sin.
But. There is hope. There Is a Gospel. This unthinkable Good News. This unfathomable Savior who upends our lives and breaks us until we live for eternal things, until our eyes are set on Him, our Living Hope. Jesus chases all our fear away, and the believing are relieved of their fear.
Whom shall we fear? What shall we fear when nothing… Not. one. thing. can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
There is no place for fear even in a world falling apart, for we belong to the only One who upholds all things by the word of His power. We are children of the only One who can fix this mess. This mess of children running for their lives. This mess of broken families, broken dreams, broken hearts. This mess of worry. This mess of all kinds of sickness and sin. There is a Savior and He saves in every way.
I sought the LORD, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Psalm 34:4
There is no place fear. Let fear fall and stand strong in your faith. Your faith being refined by all these trials like gold. It’s of greater worth than you might know. It’s the very thing that turns the world upside down.
