Day 10 of 21: Fear

While we were traveling around telling everyone about the people in Papua New Guinea, we described them as people who live in fear.  If someone gets sick, they have to figure out who spoke the words against them to make them sick.  So they live in fear to please people and spirits.  When they are pregnant, they wont cross over flowing water, in fear that something bad would happen to their child.  They speak secret words while they garden, in fear that if they don’t, their gardens will be poisoned.  When someone dies, they have to mourn “well”, because if they don’t the spirits will not be happy.  Then, they bury them on a cliff, so that when the spirit comes from the ground, it will fall down the cliff and not harm them.  They are constantly living in fear.

Shouldn’t I be different because of the hope I have in Christ?!  We are supposed to choose faith and not fear.  But I have been finding myself choosing fear while I am in the middle of nowhere.  I get scared when Graham has a fever…could he have malaria?  I get nervous and can’t sleep when I hear people talking outside on the airstrip…are they on our stairs?  Sometimes I stay up at night just worrying about so many different things.  Some might say, you have the right to worry…you are in the middle of nowhere.  But it shouldn’t make a difference where we are.  If we are in a city, in a jungle, wherever, we are to rely on our hope that we have in Christ, and choose to have faith and not fear (Thanks Amy Edwards!)