My Turn: Facing fears in haunts, rain and faith
People love to be scared. If we didn’t we wouldn’t have weathermen and haunted houses.
Weathermen love to scare us, and we love to let ‘em. They come on TV, or anywhere else they can find to terrify us about the weather. This time of year, it's storms. And even if you just moved here last week, you already know if it’s in the 90s during the day, its gonna storm that night. But we still turn on the weatherman so he can terrify us with his Doppler radar and all his horrifying weather words and lethal adjectives. “Torrential” rainfall, “damaging” winds, flash floods, and “dangerous” lightening. Throw in a funnel cloud or two and few rotations, and we’re done for. And we love it!
If weathermen weren’t bad enough, some nut came along and invented the haunted house. A place where people pay good money to go inside an old house full of people wearing rubber boogerman masks who jump out of the dark to scare us. The best ones always have a man who with a chainsaw that doesn’t have the blade on it to chase you out of the house when you’re done. We all know it doesn’t have a blade, but we let him scare us to death anyhow.
One year in my community a volunteer fire department decided to raise money by haunting a house. And they were good too. People came from miles around to get haunted by them. They even had a man in a gorilla suit who got after in the parking lot. He chased you in the house, and the man with the chainsaw chased you out.
One night some of the gorilla’s VFD buddies decided to place a trick on him. They a gave a lady a blank pistol and told her shoot the gorilla when he came after her. She arrived and had no more than got out of her car when here came that gorilla, thumping his chest and making gorilla noises and everything. She started running, then stopped, turned around, pulled out the gun, and shot that gorilla six times. The gorilla screamed, threw himself on the ground and rolled around in the dirt hollering, “She shot me! She shot me! while trying to find the bullet holes at the same time!
For human beings, fear isn’t a bad thing. Its actually a gift from God to protect us. In its proper place. Fear keeps us from doing things that could hurt us. It’s when we let fear take over our lives or keep us from doing things we ought to do that it causes us problems.
To balance our fears, Jesus spends a great deal of time in the Gospels telling us not to be afraid. Encouraging us to trust in him, even when we have reason to fear the most.
In Matthew Chapter 14, we find Jesus doing just that. He had just finished feeding the 5,000 and sends his disciples on ahead of him to cross the sea of Galilee by boat. He then dismissed the crowds and went up on a mountain to pray. The disciples, meanwhile, were at sea facing heavy weather and harsh waves. By the 4th watch, which was between 3 and 6 a.m., they had only made it a few miles out. Then they see Jesus walking toward them on the water. Thinking they were seeing a ghost they cried out in fear. To calm them, Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid."
Peter said to him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus said, “Come.” Peter leapt out of boat and began to walk toward Christ on the water, but when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened and beginning to sink and cried out, “Lord, save me!” And Jesus immediately did.
In this narrative Jesus shows us the importance of having complete faith in him. That when we’re caught up in the storms of life, he is always present with us. And like Peter, we should have the faith it takes to take on the storm, but should never take our eyes off Christ. Because when we focus on the storm and not on Christ, we are apt to lose faith and be swallowed up by it. But even then, Christ is still there, ready to reach out and save us when we call on him for help.
Deacon W.S. "Bill" Melton, Jr. is assigned to St. Michael Catholic Church, Gastonia and can be reached at wsmelton@stmccg.org or 704-862-8982.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Facing fears in haunts, rain and faith
