I’ll never forget the first time I watched Monsters, Inc. with the kids. We’d rented it so were watching it at home. Both of them were pretty small. They laughed in all the right places–and the grabbed hold of my arms and scrambled into my lap at the expected ones too. They–and I–thoroughly enjoyed the movie. But what I remember most isn’t honestly the plot or the names of the characters or anything like that. What I remember most is the bad guy. Or rather, one particular trait of the bad guy.

He could make himself invisible. And that made him terrifying. Because you never knew where he was. What he might be doing. 

It’s the same thing with the Indominus Rex in  Jurassic World, right? The fact that this enormous, vicious creature could hide right out in the open…TERROR. Pure terror.

We always have this idea that if we can perceive it, we can fight it. If we can identify it, we can defeat it. If we can put our finger on it, we can solve it.

But sometimes we can’t…because we can’t.

Too often, though, that’s the kind of enemy we face. It’s true of cancer. It’s true of autoimmune disease. It’s true of viruses. It’s true of termites eating away at your foundation and of mold growing in your attic. The unseen, unperceived, unknowable things are the ones that sneak up on us without warning, slithering about in the dark. And then when they pounce . . .

What? What are we to do? How are we to fight it off?

The invisible enemy is the scariest enemy. I’ve been entirely certain of that ever since I first watched that cute animated movie with my kids. But it’s something I remembered not just because it’s true in storytelling and disease…it’s something I remembered because it’s true in the realm of the Spirit as well.

We don’t fight against flesh and blood. We fight against powers and principalities and the rulers of darkness of this age. Invisible things. We always fight against invisible things. And while it can seem terribly unfair, terribly terrifying, terribly difficult for us corporeal beings, there’s something we have to remember.

We’re not just fighting an invisible enemy.

We’re serving an invisible God.

I’ve never really seen that in a movie–salvation for the hero coming from an unseen force. An invisible hand sweeping it all away. It probably wouldn’t be satisfying to watch, right? Though we still hope for it in the real world. God, put an end to this! God, stop the bad thing! Why doesn’t He just swoop down and make it right?

And yet . . . and yet we do see salvation coming from an unseen direction all the time. The character you thought was out for the count. The helicopter arriving in the nick of time. Physical things perceived with our eyes and ears and noses.

Kinda like Jesus. He came in the flesh to be our physical salvation. To be the visible answer of our invisible God. He’s done that already, my friends. Triumphing over the ultimate enemy–death. It may still claim our bodies, but it cannot touch our souls. As if we have that certainty, how can fear rule us?

We will always fear what we can’t see. Can’t know. But faith, my friends…faith is as powerful a weapon as any we could ever ask for from the military. Because it too harnesses that Invisible. It is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.

How do we know God is at work? That His armies are marching against our enemies? Because of faith. If a sneeze is the evidence of a cold–that unseen virus–then faith is the physical manifestation of God Himself. We don’t think of it that way, do we? We tend to think of faith as another not-physical, unseen thing.

But it isn’t. It’s fully visible. Fully physical. It is the substance.

Which means we need to SHOW IT to each other. More, we need to show it to the world. We don’t need to fear the invisible–because we serve the Invisible. And faith is our proof that it works. Now is our time to Shine it forth.

Now is the time to fast. To pray. And to cling to Him and His promises with a visible shield. Faith. It can protect us from the fiery darts. But only if we lift it up before us.

People are selfish.

This isn’t a newsflash. People have always been selfish, and I don’t see that changing any time in the near future. At the core, we’re always looking out for us. Me. My family. They matter most. I’ll do anything I have to do to provide and protect. Right?

I daresay most of us think this way–it’s the way the human brain is wired, frankly. It’s natural. 

But Jesus asks us to give up those natural inclinations when we follow Him. He asks us to put the souls of strangers above the health of our own.

59 Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”
But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”~ Luke 9:59-60, NKJV

In so many teachings, Jesus is instructing us to change our perspective. On what we define as sin. Of where our hearts should be. Of who we should love. Of how we should love them. Time and again He challenges us to love our neighbor.

Time and again, He and the apostles make it clear that this faith, this trust, this decision to become a slave of Christ means giving up our lives–giving up the ME–for Him.

We’re in a time of trial right now–something that can be said a lot in history on a national or international scale and pretty much always on individual levels. I’ve heard a lot of fellow-Christians saying, “Don’t live in fear!”

And this is #Truth. Don’t live in fear. You don’t have to, because you know that your life isn’t your own. You know that you’re His. There doesn’t need to be fear for these bodies.

But let’s not be ignorant. We can say God has this in His hand, and that too is #Truth. But God had the Black Death in His hand too. He had the Spanish flu. He had every other worldwide pandemic. That doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be suffering and death, of both the faithful and the faithless, the just and the unjust. It simply means that He’s still Lord through it. It doesn’t mean we won’t die. It means if we do, He’ll welcome those who believe in Him with open arms. Yes, He can protect His children from any virus–but we know He doesn’t always choose to. We know it in the statics from past pandemics. We know it by logic. And we know it because we know that He doesn’t define tragedy in the same way we do. Christians can and do die all the time. It’s something we’re not told won’t happen, but which we’re instead told not to fear.

Where, then, is the line between fear and wisdom? 

More, where is the line between living fearlessly and still loving our neighbors?

If you didn’t follow that jump, let’s spend a bit of time on it. You do not have to fear. But what about the older lady next door? What about the stranger on the street? What about the coworker or the delivery man or the clerk? The mom whose child has immunodeficiency? The daughter whose father is in the middle of chemo? Do they have that certainty?

So what if your determination to live without fear and live life as normal endangers theirs?

This is the question my family is wrestling with as we determine what lines to draw in these troubling weeks. We don’t fear for us. But we’re not called to think only of us. We’re called to think of them. The people in need of Christ. The people who are at risk. The people who are frightened and without hope.

“Not living in fear” should not mean putting others in danger. Not our fellow believers who are at risk of physical illness, and not the rest of the world whose souls don’t have that certainty in Him.

Love your neighbor.

Love them with encouragement and faithful words and promises of Someone bigger than their fear. But love them too in wisdom and caution and care. Love them with distance when our leaders ask for it, and with praise to God that distance, in this day and age, doesn’t mean being cut off. Let’s be grateful that we can still be in the community through the wonders of technology, and let’s respect the wisdom of the professionals we expect to turn to when something bad does happen.

Let’s stop thinking about how we can keep from giving in to fear…and start thinking about how we can best show love to those around us. Be wise, and think of them. Knowing that if everyone thinks first of their neighbor, that means someone has our backs too.

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