The Banana Skin

2 Kings 1:5 The Lord’s angel said to Elijah, “Go with the captain. Don’t be afraid of him.”

Many people, without even realising it, live in a constant state of doom and gloom, fear and loathing. In fact, that nagging sense of fear is robbing many a life from the freedom that Jesus came to bring us.

When I was in London one time, back in 2005, I hopped on the underground at Gloucester Road to go and take in some of the sights. I was a bit hungry so I’d bought a banana on the platform.

But I couldn’t find a bin anywhere to throw away the banana peel. Then I realised; with all the terrorism that’s plagued our world – and London has indeed had way more than her fair share – for obvious reasons, they don’t have all that many bins in public areas.

It was only a few weeks later that bombs went off again on the underground and at Tavistock Square.

Terrorism is all about fear. The words “fear” or “afraid” appear almost 450 times throughout the Bible and most often it’s God telling people “Don’t be afraid.”

2 Kings 1:15 The Lord’s angel said to Elijah, “Go with the captain. Don’t be afraid of him.”

We can and should take sensible precautions in all sorts of areas of our lives, but no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot control some of the scary things that are going to happen to us along the way.

So now – you and I – we have a choice. The first option (and this is the one that many people choose without even thinking about it, it’s the option that we tend to fall into by default) is to live our lives in fear.

Chronic fear is out there in epidemic proportions.

The second option (one that far fewer people take) is to trust the one Person who really can say – “Don’t be afraid”.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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