scared of a colour?

i read an essay on aliveness (the author had much more poetic terms for it) recently, and the lady who wrote it said that one of her goals was to do one thing that scared her every day.

this does not mean go handle cobras, walk along the edge of a skyscraper rooftop, or play with knives.

it means to face those ridiculous fears that plague you. you know which ones. the fear of singing in public, of starting a project, of talking too loud or too much, of sharing your life, of a certain colour. these are not you.

so i have a mission.

today i am embracing the colour orange. up until now i have feared this colour. it is too bright, too bold, too reminiscent of traffic cones. but this morning i realised that the things i fear about it are things that i actually love. yet somehow that fear has remained.

why do we cling to these fears as though they are a part of us?

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;

but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

.

we can't say that it is in our nature to fear - perhaps in our unredeemed nature, but we have been redeemed. It Is Finished. so when we fear, we are ignoring God's gift. remember here?when we fear, just like when we cease to rejoice, it is as though someone has given us a washing machine as a gift, because they want us to have a better life, and yet we continue to wash our clothes by hand. God first gave us life. and after we messed up, he gave us more life.

so now that we are saved, now that not only our souls but also our lives, the very world we live in is covered all over by His redemption -

do we have any reason to fear?

and closer to the point...

do we have any right to fear?

this embracing life, this casting off of fear - at first glance it does seem humanistic... or even hedonistic. but i believe it to be the opposite. think about it. humanism comes from the idea that man is central. that mankind stands in the center and the entire universe literally revolves around him. God is not in this equation. our lives are our own, and nobody else's.

but our lives are not our own. our lives are God's. they are a piece of his creation, and what is our purpose here but to praise him and to guard his creation against sin? allowing fear into your life is allowing the effects of sin to alter you.

so this is why i am embracing orange today. i may not be able to refute all unbiblical doctrines, i may never save a life, but i can do this. i can fight human nature in this small way.