Family Life

Every now and then, as I sit with the boys to pray with them before bed, Joel will ask to pray for thunder. It’s not that he likes thunder. Quite the contrary. It terrifies him. He’s only two, so with his limited vocabulary it’s hard to tell what kind of prayer he wants, exactly. But I get the general idea. Then after a pause comes the list of related fears: lightning, wind, rain, storm. So we pray and ask for God’s protection on them as they go to sleep, to keep them safe from the thunder, and lightning and storm. Sometimes (like tonight) there is thunder rumbling in the distance. Often there’s nothing at all. A clear sky and a clear forecast.

I like storms and lightning and thunder. The more the better. As a kid I’d stand and watch excitedly as a tropical storm lashed the trees, sheets of rain obscured the street, lightning caused me to recoil at it’s sudden brilliance, and pounding thunder rattled the windows. The awesome power of God’s creation! So I find it hard to relate to the boys’ fears. Their terror is real, though, and I talk quietly to them, explain to them, try to set their mind at ease.

I remember once when I was small my little sister was moaning in her sleep in the middle of the night. I woke and thought I heard the howling of wolves (just for a bit of perspective, my bedroom was on the second floor of a house of brick in the middle of a big city) . Wolves were in my bedroom! They’d devour me the instant I set foot off the bed! I sat as far from the edge of the bed as I could, and wailed in terror. I kept up my own howling for what seemed (to me) an eternity. Eventually my Mum came in and comforted me, and I calmed down and went back to sleep. The following morning at breakfast I explained what had made me so terrified. My parents laughed at such a silly idea. Wolves! Ridiculous! I felt misunderstood, unimportant, disillusioned.

So while I can’t relate to my boys’ fear of thunderstorms, I remember vividly what it’s like to be a terrified little boy. The effect of my parents’ reaction causes me to tread softly with my own kids’ worried prayer requests. I can certainly try to help them understand the thunder won’t hurt them, try to defuse their fears, hope they’ll grow out of them. But the fear is real all the same, to be taken seriously, even if the reason for it is trivial. So we talk. I listen, I hold them close, I pray.

We all have our fears, even if all we’re afraid of is rejection or being lonely or being shamed. We give lip service to the idea that God will take care of us, but often we really mean that while God can take care of us, He probably won’t. At least, not to our satisfaction. To illustrate this concept, here are some places in the Bible we are told not to fear:

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 10:13 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.