The Irony of Fear

Today, a dear family friend lost his father to West Nile Virus.  At 12:01 AM Paul Bellington, Sr., slipped out of his coma and went to be with the Lord. I met Mr. Bellington several times, and he was one of those older gentlemen who seemed to love life.  He drove a beat-up van, wore gray hair and wrinkles, but nothing about his heart was old.  He made jokes with my kids, asked questions like he was interested in the answers, and grinned from ear to ear no matter what you said.  He was one of those people you just left his presence with that swollen, good-hearted, "I want to be like that guy" feeling.

We got to know Mr. Bellington through his son who shares the same name, Paul.  Paul and his dad shared more than a name: they are both a complete joy to be around.   Paul spent his childhood as a missionary on the Amazon River in Brazil, while his parents shared Christ in the rainforest of South America.  Paul tells great stories of eating interesting rodents, catching terrible diseases, and living the vagabond life that comes with being a MK.  Why?  Because his father, Mr. Bellington, spent fifty years tabling his ideas of a "normal" life to share Christ with those south of our border.  Every time we talked to Paul, his eighty-something-year-old dad was driving to Mexico to serve here, or back from Brazil sharing there. 

That's why his death from a mosquito bite just minutes from where we live seems so devastatingly ironic.  Not devastating for him . . .he is seeing Christ for the first time, basking in the glow of heaven . . .but devastating for me.  I spend a great deal of my time motivated by fear.  My fear is not the overt "I think I am going to have a heart attack", all-consuming terror (although I know tons of people who suffer from panic attacks that feel this way); my fear is more subtle.  My fear looks more like, "Maybe I'll do that when the kids get older; what if something happened to me?"   Or, "That area seems dangerous. What if I got mugged, or shot, or eaten by a bear?"  Or, "Man, I really feel led to [fill-in-the-blank], but something happened to or I heard about someone who, and I just can't shake the nagging feeling . . ."  Those are my fears; fears grounded in the what-ifs that stifle me from taking any step from safety.  And, what's crazier?  Nearly everything I fear will NEVER come to pass.

And, here is Mr. Bellington, who was moments from a mosquito bite that could give him malaria, inches from a person who had some fever or infection that may take his life, and right in the midst of unavoidable violence.  Yet, the Lord protected him in that work for fifty years.  He did not die from the disease and crime that are rampant in Central and South America; he died in suburban America, from exactly the same thing that may have deterred him from serving if he had let fear control his actions.


Part of me wants to say, "Now, we can't go crazy and just do dangerous things. We have a family." And, please don't get me wrong.  (A) I don't want to move to a foreign country and throw all that I know here out the window. (B) I think those with minor children have some responsibility to be reasonable in their adventures. And (C) Not everyone in ministry is spared illness or death; the Lord uses all kinds of suffering to make His name known. 

But, another part of me is frustrated.  Do I not think the Lord is sovereign? Do I not think He can protect me from all things, until the appointed time when he wants to bring me home?  Do I let something as puny as fear control my life rather than the Creator of the universe?  Mr. Bellington did not let fear guide him, and as a result, he got to live a life full of adventure, bearing fruit for the kingdom.  He gets to see His Maker and hear the lives touched by his response to the Spirit.  I can only imagine he will hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant," as he turned the little he was given into much for the Lord.  God has already numbered my days.  I pray I would spend them with bold assurance in His will and corresponding action to His plan. What a tragedy it would be to spend my entire life avoiding the mosquito, only to succumb to it right where I thought I was safe.