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In July, we will have reached the year anniversary of moving into our first home. The neighborhood is quiet, and the residents we are between are both polite. Despite this, for several months now, on and off, everytime I pull into my driveway after work, Kris approaches me with a nail in his hand and tells me I’m ridiculously lucky. I’ve managed, again, to avoid the nail in the driveway. But this morning, Kris called me after arriving at work. Whoever has been leaving nails in our driveway must have gotten tired of us being lucky, because someone embedded a nail into a tire on Kris’s truck. Purposefully, judging by the depth and placement of the nail. Not a terrible expense, fortunately. But an inconvenice, to be sure. Worse than that, there is no reasonable explanation for why someone would do this. It’s a senseless, malicious act. But the truth is, there is no reasonable explanation for hate. Hate, at it’s core, is fear. Fear of growth. Fear of change. Fear that maybe, we don’t have as much control over things as we think we do.

But 1 John 4:18 tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. I keep hearing people say we are living in dark and scary times. Dark, sure. Scary? No. As Christians, we have accepted Jesus into our hearts, and Jesus was, and is, the manifestation of perfect love. If He lives within our hearts, then we can live our lives without fear. Even when all around is frightening to human eyes. It isn’t frightening to God’s eyes. And He will counsel us with his eye upon us (Psalm 32:8).
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

Brianna Richardson