Fear, Hope and Love

Fear is the first response when people meet God in the Bible, whether through a burning bush, a call experience, or an angel. Then, invariably, come the words: “Fear not!” For even our fear of God needs to move on beyond guilt and punishment towards perfect love: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1John 4:18).

Walter Brueggemann calls this persistent love that sustains hope in the face of fear and disaster the ‘nevertheless’ factor. He says that the hope expressed in texts like Habakkuk 3 is “not an escape or an alternative to the present. It is rather a resource for a different obedience in the present, on the basis of confidence in God’s future . . . It is the great “nevertheless” that energizes and emancipates.”*

“Though the fig tree does not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vine;

Though the produce of the olive fails and the field yields no food;

Though the flock is cut of from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls,

Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

Though, though, though . . . Yet!

Yet indeed!

How might we re-write this today for our own situation? Well sadly, there’s no need to do so for our farmers. But how about:

Though the kids are not behaving, and the PC has just crashed

Though the water tank is empty, and the car has just been smashed

Though the chemo isn’t working, and the credit card is full

Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.

This stubborn, sustaining hope does not disappoint us, because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5), and that perfect love casts out fear.

* See Walter Brueggemann, “The Hope of Heaven . . . on Earth”, Biblical Theology Bulletin, 29 (1999), 99-111.

(This is a short version of an address given to a past BUV Gathering by Keith Dyer)