Thought for Today
Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the LORD your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you."
Proverbs 28:1 The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
2 Corinthians 10:1 I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ-- I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!—
2 Peter 2:10 -- especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority. Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,
Are you, by nature, bold or meek and gentle? If bold, are you willful? Do fear and dread dominate your life? And, while you are pondering on those questions, ‘is it nature or nurture?’ Are you who and what you are because that is how you are ‘hard wired,’ or because that is how your ‘user software’ is structured?
I believe our society preferentially favors and rewards those who are deemed bold. “The phrase ‘fortune favors the bold; is attributed to the Roman poet Virgil, who used the Latin version ‘audentis fortuna iuvat.’ This phrase emphasizes that luck or fortune tends to favor those who take risks and act courageously.” (Copilot Search)
When I took my first college courses in finance and economics, I learned the adage that “return is directly proportional to risk.” I understood that adage as telling me that any venture carries risk, risk of failure and risk of success. Were I more bold, I might have understood it as telling me that to touch the sky I must reach for it, must take risks. Are you, by nature, bold or meek and gentle?
Does your basic nature of bold or meek permeate throughout your entire life? Are you bold in some things and meek in others? Are the human beings God created so one-dimensional that they must be uniformly and consistently one or the other? Or, are the limits of our horizons merely limits that we ourselves have set?
History and current events sometimes provide us conflicting answers to this whole question. The financial history of our own nation is replete with gold rushes, gold booms and, inevitably, gold busts, the collapse of the entire gold commodity market. There have been land booms and real estate collapses. Many of us remember the dot-com boom and the collapse.
What is true in the world of money and economics is equally true in the world of faith and religion. Is the repeated cycle of boom and bust, obsession with and totally ignoring of fads fixed in our DNA? Is the intensity and obsession with new ideas merely too much to sustain for any length of time? Are we, by nature, bold or meek and gentle? Either way, is it nature or nurture?
Despite years, decades and even centuries of study and debate, the jury is still out on all those questions. Through it all, each of us as an individual has still had to deal with who and what we are in all that we do. I suspect that for all who are reading this and thinking about this the refrain from a song from our youth is repeating in our mind, “And the beat goes on.”
Christians are those who publicly confess their faith and belief in Jesus as the Christ. Christians are those who pattern their thoughts, words and deeds on the Incarnation, ministry, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus. Whether our basic nature is to be bold or gentle, meek and mild, we strive to be like Jesus. Christians strive to be bold in our faith.
Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, I recall the words of Jesus, "Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Each time I step into a pulpit, each time I preach, teach or even think about my faith, I am emboldened by Jesus’ promise, “30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
What is that yoke, that burden? "Luke 10:27 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus makes me bold enough to focus my life on just that.
Stay safe, be bold in your faith, trust God,
Pastor Ray