Do Not Be Afraid

Today, my older son boarded a plane and headed to Bogotà, Colombia for a ten day vacation to stay with a friend he met while working at a local amusement park this past summer. I have never met this friend. I have never met his family. I only know what I have heard about Bogotà over the past several years. And I also know what I read on the state department's website about conditions in Colombia. I could rattle off a list of warnings that I found on the website - and I did rattle them off to my son - as he made his plans to go. Here are just a few gems:

• Watch out in the airport. Pick pocketers are looking for passports - especially at Christmas...

•  "Violence by narco-terrorist groups continues to affect some rural areas as well as large cities..."

• DO NOT take a cab. If you do, only take the cabs that are located in this particular area....

• Be careful what you wear; people have had jewelry ripped off from around their necks...

• US government officials and their families are only allowed to travel to major cities by air..."they may not travel by road outside urban areas at night..."

I could list about a half dozen more things.

My son just looked at me as though I were crazy. But, I told him, it is important to be aware of these things so that he can be wise.

Fear - What an interesting creature that is. It prevents us from meeting new people, from having conversations with members of the Tea Party and/or participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement, from seeing another person unlike ourselves as a child of God.

During the Bush years, fear was always at our doorstep and it made me angry that we were made to feel frightened. I fought this tooth and nail. Our conversations around the dinner table often addressed this problem. We saw people in our country giving up their rights just to be "safe." We discussed the fact that God is with us no matter what happens - and that means we can live with less fear in our lives.

I did a search of the phrase, "Do not be afraid" in the Oremus Bible Browser and discovered that these words appear 67 times in the Bible. The fact that these words are spoken so frequently in the Bible says something about our human condition. In the Old Testament, it's mostly God  and the prophets who issue this command, although the angels, Moses, Joseph and others say these words as well. Angels and Jesus are the primary ones speaking these words in the New Testament. Sixty-seven times! Imagine that!

It is Advent and I hear the story of Joseph and young, pregnant Mary. In Matthew, an angel appears to Joseph and tells him "do not be afraid." When Mary learns the news of her pregnancy, it is an angel who shares this news with her in Luke, starting with these same words. An angel appears to Zechariah as well to let him know that Elizabeth will have a child, too. Again, the angel's greeting begins with the words, "do not be afraid."

I am trying to hear the angels speak to me in this moment, in my experience of Advent -  as my idealistic son wanders off into a strange country that he doesn't know. I smile to myself knowing that he must have taken our family conversations to heart. And oddly, I am thankful for that, even now as I struggle myself to not be fearful. My son is teaching me again, "do not be afraid." He makes me proud.

So for now, I will keep him in my prayers and give thanks to God that nothing separates us from the love of God; that we are all held in the palm of God's loving hand. And, I will try to think about how the parents of my son's friend must have felt when he came to the United States to work for the summer. I bet they were afraid as well. (I wonder what their state department said about travel to the states!)

As I wait for my son to come home, I will also pray for the day when we all can live without fear:

Come, Lord Jesus. Come!