Be not afraid!

Standing in the parking lot of the Greensboro bus station
sometime past midnight, "be not afraid" is likely to sound unconvincing coming from the guy sidling up to you. This, however, is the standard angel introduction. I don't suspect angels are going to ask for money, pick my pockets, solicit sex, or... well, use your imagination. Who actually says this? Typically people who should probably be wary of, in an attempt to get you to let your guard down.

When this shows up in the Bible, I think, there's a much different reason to be afraid: your life is about to be turned upside down. Completely rearranged. You will be asked to do things you don't particularly want to do, mostly because you don't think you're capable, but also because, well, it will require you to change.

I can imagine an unmarried teenager being reluctant to bear a child, no matter what the reassurances are. This is what is means to be favored? I'm sure she pondered that in her heart as well. Or you might be asked to cry out against Nineveh, or back to the land you've just run away from, in order to ask the impossible. I think that part of the measure of a genuine call is a reluctance, that recognition that it's what must be done and the insistence that it not be done by me.

There are other ways to resist, though. Just as I am unlikely to be called to cry out against Nineveh - among other things, it's not there any more - I am also unlikely to take the next boat in the opposite direction.

I have a book, and I have an album. What is this book, what is this album? The copyright information on the book is ambiguous, the picture on the cover not what I would expect. It seems unlikely that it's really a first edition in good condition, but what is it? I'm not sure. The album is a bit clearer - the misspelling of Cannonball Adderley's name, the reversal of the song titles for the second side, the "six eye" label. It really seems to be an original, given to be by a man who hates Miles Davis, "take it away, I'll be glad to be rid of it!"

I'm unlikely to hop on the next boat to Tarshish (wherever that may be, exactly), because I'm not really Jonah. I'm much more likely to get a message and then analyze it to death, get hung up on the details, and miss the bigger picture. What's really important about the book? The title and author are clear enough, whatever edition it is, and I don't have any reason to suspect that it's mislabeled. What's important about an album? Well, that's Miles on trumpet, Bill Evans on piano... it sounds really good.

This isn't a sermon, so I don't have a good closer here. But I hope my gentle reader will ask herself - or himself - what God is asking of you, and how you avoid it. That's not the same as actually dealing with it, but it's the necessary first step.