by Warren Baldwin

When I was a kid my family lived in a large house out in the country. The house was over 100 years old when I lived in it, and it had some of the features of an old house: creaking floors, rooms with squeaky doors. It was a neat old house, the kind that has character. Memories. Memories from families that lived there before us and memories that we created. Lots of them.

I love the memories, and I loved the house. That house was especially neat when our cousins from the city came to visit. With all the rooms and the dim lighting upstairs, my brothers and I came up with some pretty ingenious methods of entertaining our cousins. Well, entertaining ourselves, anyway, at our cousins' expense.

For example, all we had to tell the younger cousins was, "There are lions and bears up there, so you better stay away." That worked when we wanted to keep them out of our room for a while. It also made it funny when their parents told them to go to bed, but they were afraid to go up into the black expanse of the "upstairs."

"Good night, Brian. Watch out for the bears. Don't know how you can sleep with those things lurking around waiting to eat you."

One time, we made a ghost out of a sheet. We strung a line from upstairs down the staircase and attached the ghost. When a couple of the cousins, girls this time, were getting ready to go upstairs, one of my brothers let fly with the ghost. Down the stairs it came, with us boys howling and the girls screaming.

I miss that house. And the cousins.

I think by now they have gotten over the fear that Jim, Bob, and I stirred within them. In that context, fear was a pretty harmless thing. Cousins teasing cousins about bears, lions, ghosts. Of course, there were parents there to assure the younger ones that there were no such creatures on the premises. "Look, I'll turn a light on. Do you see any mean creatures? You'll be fine." And they were.

But fear never completely leaves us, does it? When we are children, it was fear of lions and bears. And ghosts. But when we get older, many of the fears are of a more serious nature, aren't they? Making enough money to pay the bills. Keeping a job in an age of cut-backs, lay-offs, and transferring of jobs to markets overseas. Crime. War. Health. Retirement. Our children's well-being. Then, later, there are grandkids to worry about.

Do you ever long for the day when the only fears you have will be of imaginary lions, bears and ghosts that live upstairs at your cousins' house?

I don't want to minimize anybody's fear about anything. I certainly don't want anybody doing that to me with the fears I try to manage! But one thing I try to do is keep fear in perspective. And to keep the objects of my fear in perspective.

I know things don't always turn out well. But I know they usually do. And I know that, for one who trusts in a power greater than anything that threatens us, the things that cause us fear diminish in size and power.

We can hold to the greatest words of hope and comfort ever uttered: "My peace I leave with you; my peace I give you ... Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14:27).

Jesus spoke those words. And they are more powerful than any bear, lion or ghost lurking in the shadows of my old house.