When I was a teenager, in seventh or maybe eighth grade, I
heard about the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for the first time. At least
I think it was the same program, although even if it wasn’t it was one so
similar that reading the email brought it all back. I loved to sing and I had a
male friend in those days who loved to sing too – no romantic interest
whatsoever, we were just good friends and we loved to sing and sometimes sang
together in choir or for student shows and things like that. When we heard
about the Scholastic Art and Writing Award, or whatever it was that we heard
about back then, we decided somehow to write a song together, though I don’t
think that either of us had ever written a song. My friend may have – he was
always surprising me with his creative talents, but I know that I’d never
written a song or anything else except for papers for school, and oh, yes, I
did once write a play in elementary school – it was about the battle of 1776 I
think, again for some contest or other. I’d forgotten all about that until
right now – a foreshadowing of the future, of me at a much older age writing
plays. But up until my friend and I decided somehow to write a song I’d never
written one before. But that didn’t stop us, so write away we did.
It was a very sappy song as I remember it. I still have a
tape of it somewhere, and listened to it not too long ago, maybe a couple of
years back, but it seems like yesterday. It was a love song about a knight in silver
and all sorts of allusions and plays on words with night and knight – I can’t believe
we took ourselves so seriously, but God bless us we did. And that’s one of the
things that the Lord has been speaking to me about lately – not about taking ourselves
seriously in the sense of being serious and sad, and not about writing sappy
and sentimentally silly songs, but about the fact that even though the song was
most probably a bunch of teen-aged geeky silliness, I wasn’t afraid or ashamed
to go ahead and write it. I was the one who wrote the lyrics if I’m remembering
correctly – the title was “Silver Knights,” and I was the one who had the
brainy idea to call it that. But what the Lord has been talking to me about is
that I wasn’t afraid to do it, I wasn’t afraid to write it, to sing it with my
friend and send it into a contest. I think we even sang it at some school
assembly or something, the memory is
vague, but I think that did happen.
Fear is something that can be debilitating. At the very
least it will hold us back from trying something new, and at the very worst it
can keep us from all that God has for us. When we are living with fear and
doubt, we will sometimes decide that we are much more comfortable where we are,
even if we are in misery, than to try to do something that might change our
lives in a positive way. We might miss out on writing that song and singing it,
and we might miss out on love, on light and on life.
1 John 4:18 tells us, “There is no fear in love; but perfect
love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is
not perfected in love.” Verse 19 adds a very beautiful and important part of
the equation, “We love, because He first loved us.” In John 15:9, Jesus tells
us, “Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; abide in my love.”
When we know the love of God and abide in that love, we will have no fear, and
we will be able to reach outward with that love that has been given to us. When
we have no fear, we will be able to reach outward, not fearing that we will
look foolish or be rejected, and taking the risk because we know at the end of
the day we have all the love that matters in the love that is given to us by
God. We will not stay in a place of misery because we know that we deserve love
and happiness. We will walk in light and in love because we have been filled to
overflowing with the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
I heard a woman singing on the Staten Island Ferry the other
night, songs of praise and worship that were very off key. But she wasn’t
afraid to sing, even though we were far from any church or choir. The song was “Shout
to the North” by Martin Smith, “Shout to the North and the South. Sing to the
East and the West. Jesus is Savior to All. Lord of Heaven and Earth.” Don’t
ever let anyone or anything keep you from singing or writing that song or
shouting to the North, South, East and West. Don’t ever let anyone or anything
keep you from all that God has for you. Don’t ever believe that you deserve to
live in misery or that things are always going to be the way they always were.
The Lord of Heaven and Earth says that there is more and He is Savior to All,
not just for the few, but to all. What He says will be so in your life. All you
have to do is believe Him.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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