Get ready to have a truth-bomb dropped on you from the unlikeliest of sources: a Harry Potter movie.
In the beginning of the first movie, the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry is trapped at his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon’s house. Letters from the school of Hogwarts keep arriving at the house, inviting Harry to attend the school. But Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon don’t want Harry to know about the wizard world, or that he is a wizard, so they keep these letters from him. To them, the wizard world is a threat, an unknown monstrosity of darkness, strange happenings, and people who are are wild, foreign, powerful, and mysterious. They are consumed by their fear.
And fear causes them (and us) to do some ridiculous things. One small, quick scene in this movie sums up our reaction to fear. It’s only a 3-second long scene, but it holds fascinating insights into our human nature.
In this scene, Uncle Vernon is screwing boards over the house’s mail slot. He is so fed up with these letters coming into his home, these letters that he perceives at threats to him and his way of life, that he takes an old board and closes the mail slot. (By the way, this doesn’t work. The letters end up coming through the chimney. Truth will always find a way into our lives.)
By doing this, Uncle Vernon is, 1. Ruining his door, and 2. Cutting himself off from the rest of the world.
He ruins the aesthetics of his home, and turns what was once beautiful into something ugly and misshapen. He ruins the purpose of the door and the mail slot, and keeps it from being what it was made to be. (Who are you made to be? What is your purpose? How is fear keeping you from being who/what you were build to be?)
AND Uncle Vernon, in his efforts to control his life and keep the truth-filled, life-altering letters from entering his reality, inadvertently cuts himself off from the rest of the world. And this only gets worse. In the next scene, he moves his family to this island:
Uncle Vernon so stubbornly refuses to accept the truth that he would rather ruin his life and the life of his family than open himself up to the possibility of not knowing everything and not having everything under control.
Fear is a part of our reality. It’s woven into our lives. Fear is not something that we can avoid, eradicate, or run from. So when experience something that ignites fear in our souls, we have a choice to make. We can either 1. accept that we are fearful, surrender our control, surrender our rights, and understand that the Lord is in control and loving, or 2. we can run from fear, ignore it, fight it, and shut ourselves down.
But if we choose #2, as we shut out the fear, we inadvertently shut out the rest of the world! It’s like…if you are thirsty, and crave water, but are fearful of hydrogen. Water cannot be without hydrogen, so if you choose to give in to fear of hydrogen, then you choose to reject water in its entirety. We try to reject the part and keep the whole, but that’s not how it works. If I choose to succumb to the fear and thus avoid it it, ignore it, or run from it, then I do the same to my life in its entirety.
So choose #1! Choose to surrender, choose to be honest about fear, choose to be real and authentic and willing to show weakness. Choose Jesus, because he is faithful, honest, loving, powerful, good, and has your life under complete control. Choose to humble yourself before your community, your church, your family, and, sometimes most difficult of all, yourself. YOU AREN’T IN CONTROL. So let’s stop acting like it.
How do you respond to fear? How do you respond when something comes your way that throws you off, surprises you, threatens you, and makes you feel out of control?
Do you choose maintaining the appearance of having control at the expense of living your life, or do you choose maintaining your focus on the Lord at the expense of the appearance of having control?
I want to choose to trust the Lord when I don’t understand, when I can’t control, and when I’m overwhelmed by uncertainty. I want to choose surrender, choose vulnerability, and choose to open my heart even more to him.
Choose to put yourself in ever more vulnerable positions. He will always love you.
