It's been said that the phrase "do not fear" comes up in the Bible 365 times. That's once for every day of the year. Now, I haven't checked the validity of that, but I can say the idea of laying aside fear is a recurring theme in scripture.

I do wonder, though, if we misunderstand what that means. Having had many conversations with people who struggle with fear, I'll affirm that there are many appropriate times to be fearful.

That said, listen to the strong sense of confidence behind what the psalmist asks: Whom shall I fear? At the same time, notice that the writer acknowledges evildoers, adversaries, foes, and armies. It's not helpful to shrug off the struggles, pain, or situations that might fall on us.

But you also don't have to wallow in them.

So, yes, the psalmist will be confident, but I'm not sure that means fearlessness. The psalmist isn't showing off some false bravado. Rather, he's tapping into another important theme in the Bible: Trust.

If I trust God, I can be confident. Whatever fearful thing is in front of me, I can learn to see it in the light of God's power. Such an acknowledgement isn't denying the danger or struggle ahead, but it does offer a deeper grounding within it.

The disciples of John come to Jesus with a question about their practice of faith. They want to know why his disciples don't fast as they do. In that question, there is some wondering about faithfulness, discipline, and religious seriousness. But Jesus wants his followers to know more than rules and schedules. They should pay close attention to moments.

Jesus says, "he wedding attendants cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?" In other words, be present to what God is doing right here, right now.

That's an idea Amy Oden emphasizes in her book by the same title. She reminds us that Christian mindfulness is not about escaping reality, but about attentive presence. We learn how to wake up to God's activity in this moment, in this place, and in these circumstances. Jesus embodies such an attentiveness. He refuses to let spiritual habits become mere automatic rituals that are detached from lived reality.

Hebrews 10 tells us that the law of God was a shadow of what was coming. In that system, year after year, the people of Israel offered sacrifices for their sins. But no matter how often they prayed, prepared their offerings, or followed the rules, the cycle of guilt and imperfection continued. The Hebrews preacher sees that the system was designed to point forward, not to fix the problem.

In the same way, we sometimes try to patch up our spiritual lives with “good deeds” or by checking the right boxes. We pray, serve, or even go to church, but our hearts still wrestle with doubt, fear, and guilt. Now, praying, serving, or worshiping are not wrong in themselves. As a Methodist Christian, my tradition sees these as means of experiencing God's grace. But they are like the temple sacrifices. They show that we recognize the problem, but they cannot remove it. They weren't designed to!

Enter Jesus. Christ is not a spiritual band-aid or a temporary fix. Have you seen the bumper sticker: If Jesus is your copilot, switch seats.

I always appreciate taking part in the MLK march and prayer service each year. My favorite part comes when the march ends and we finish in worship, entering the sanctuary to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Every time I sing that song, I remember a couple of things.

I see Ms. Joy Turner, my elementary school choir director. In the third and fourth grade, do-re-mi didn’t interest me much, but I could tell something was different about that song. And I didn’t understand then that she wasn’t just teaching us how to sing. She was actually teaching us how to pray, showing us that lifting our voices together could be an act of hope and dignity.

Another memory comes from Grandma. I was in high school, sitting at her house, when she called me over. I don't remember if it was something we were watching or just a conversation that got her thinking. But she looked at me and said, “Mijo, don’t forget that what they did to them, they did to us, too.” Grandma wasn’t bitter about it. I think it was her way of passing on her family's experience and tradition.

Recently, a group of colleagues and I were asked to reflect on whether we thought racism could ever end. Out of that conversation came the idea that many Christians do not believe it could. Not that it would not, but that it could not.

As a pastor, that's disheartening. If we say something is impossible, we're likely to stop worrying about it. We learn how to live with it and maybe even stop praying about it. That leads me to wonder what kind of faith do we think God gives us. Many Christians pray "the prayer Jesus taught us," asking God to deliver them from evil.

Is our deliverance only an escape?

The biblical story assumes there are spiritual forces of evil. It names injustice, violence, and sin honestly. Again and again, though, God’s people are invited to see a future that does not yet exist. It's the paradox of now and not yet.

That kind of imagination is not naïve optimism. It is hope. As an act of resistance, hope insists that the way things are is not the way things must always be. Hope believes God is still delivering people from sin, from systems, from identities we’ve been told are unchangeable.

As a United Methodist Christian, my baptismal vows promise to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness and reject the evil powers of this world. Accepting those vows is more than reciting tradition. We are declaring that evil doesn't last against God. We're not renouncing something that’s unbeatable.