A few days ago I was excited about my morning cup of coffee because I knew my wife had bought me some new French Vanilla creamer. A simple thing to get excited about, but all the same. However, before I could enjoy this healthy additive I had to wrestle with the safety seal. Ah the safety seal…that lovely layer of plastic-like foam that keeps the terrorists out of my non-dairy creamer. This of course got me thinking, which is dangerous, about life before safety seals. There was life before 9th graders had to ride in child protective seats. And there was life before you had to provide 5 forms of ID and 3 DNA samples in order to board an aircraft. I know I am perhaps exaggerating a little bit, but look at the society that we live in today. We are scared of our own shadows.

Romans 8:15 says, ‘For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons…”. So why do we leave in fear? You may say to yourself, “But I don’t live in fear”. Think about it. We engineer our own safety out of a sense of paranoia which has no founding in the gospel. We attempt to control our own fate through safety devices and security systems and health-care plans and have forgot what it means to trust God for provision and protection. Don’t misread me. None of these things are inherently wrong. The problem is when our sense of fear drives us to put our faith in these things, rather than in Abba Father. And what is scary is that when these things fail we immediately cry out to God without having any foundation of a relationship with which to trust Him. Maybe we need a simpler faith in a God who is greater than any scheme we can devise for our own protection and well-being. Sometimes I think it would be easier just to go back to the time before safety seals. At least I would get to my non-dairy additive a little faster.