Better Than Our Fears

Lions Park duck pondThis week one of our English professors did a presentation on her sabbatical, during which she studied the diaries of her great-great-grandmother, Grace Byington, the wife of a pastor and church leader in the 1800s. The presentation was a wonderful window into the way people lived their lives back then. But more than that, I was struck by the frequent ending to Grace's diary entries: "Our Lord is better than our fears."

That refrain has been sounding out over and over in my head since I heard it on Tuesday. Our Lord is better than our fears. It was clearly of much comfort to a hard-working, sometimes disappointed woman in Michigan who churned an awful lot of butter and tended the farm in order to help make ends meet. Did she think her life was a good one?

Our Lord is better than our fears.

I did a web search for the phrase, and came up with the following passage from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon. Could Grace have read his sermons? He lived during the same years and he, too, used the phrase. Here it is:

Ah, yes, we shall often have to say, "Oh Lord, I had not thought that you would do as much as this, but You have gone far beyond what I asked or even thought." I hope that this will be among our dying speeches and confessions, that the half was never told us, that our good Lord kept the best wine until last, and that the end of the feast on earth, being but the beginning of the feast eternal in heaven, was the crown of all. Let us declare concerning our Lord that we found him better and better and better and better, even until we entered into His rest. He has been at first better than our fears, then better than our hopes, and finally better than our desires. So good, so blessed a God do we serve, that he always by His deeds of grace outruns our largest expectations. What cause we have for worship and grateful praise; let us not be slow to render it. [emphasis mine]

As we enter into the week of Thanksgiving, let me chime in with Grace and at least start by saying this: "Our Lord is better than our fears."