fear

I used to work with a retired Chief Warrant Officer who said, “Fear is a form of respect.” You can imagine what his leadership looked like.

But he wasn’t entirely wrong. I read this morning (Exodus 20:18-20), “When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.’”

God came down to the mountain to give Moses the Ten Commandments, and the little bit they could see scared the willys out of the Israelites. They didn’t want anything to do with God; they wanted to send Moses to Him as their go-between.

Why? God could have appeared as a cute little lamb, if he wanted to. The mountain could have been covered in flowers and bathed in sunshine.

But God knew our wicked hearts. He knew that we wouldn’t feel accountable to a nice fuzzy lamb. He knew that fear would always be a part of our obedience.

I need to remember that. God is awesome. God is fearsome. I can sing “What a friend we have in Jesus” all day long, but that doesn’t change the fact that God is worthy of my respect. And, yes, a healthy amount of fear.

Like C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan the lion, who represented Jesus in in his Chronicles of Narnia, “Oh, he’s not a tame lion; he’s not tame at all. But he is good.”