Chicken Little is afraid. The sky is falling and she needs to tell the king. She dashes off as fast as she can, running into friends along the way with whom she shares her fear. "The sky is falling!" she yells, and her worried friends join the race to find the king.
The well-known misadventures of Chicken Little and her friends tell a tale of fear and its infectious grasp. Chicken Little had been minding her own business when out of nowhere an acorn fell on her head. Her assumption and subsequent proclamation of the absolute worst-case scenario caused hysteria wherever she went. To me, the derived moral of the story is usually something about the dangers of jumping to conclusions or believing everything you hear. But, these days, the message I have seemed most to have identified with is one pertaining to fear. Chicken Little's mantra, "The sky is falling," has become a phrase used to indicate the belief that disaster is imminent, however reasonably or unreasonably surmised. While closing out my seventy first year, my father’s words keep ringing in my ears, “what is this world coming too.
From continued reports of worldwide Muslim extremist terrorism, the threat of international economic collapse, unanswered political corruption and unrest throughout this country, the increasing global epidemic of diabetes, all sounding an uninterrupted alarm. From where I stand the current worldwide tenor is one of fear and uncertainty. The sky indeed seems to be falling, and depending on the knock these stories make on my head I could easily join in the commotion. Broader cultural anxieties also add to this sense of fearful doom. If I were not consumed by increasing cancer rates among close friends and acquaintances, I could well be fearful of the multiple ways in which my grandchildren face dangers that I thought unimaginable at their age, within a world where uncertainty now seems the only certainty.
My observation finds that those exploiting these anxieties are politicians, marketers, and media producers knowing well that fear is a compelling motivator, and a profitable one at that. Like the music man in the Broadway musical, if they can convince me that "There's trouble right here in River City," I will hear what they have to say and open my mind (or wallet) to do something about it. I remember the absolutely silly inquisitive blurb, "Will staring at a computer screen make you go blind?" commanded my fearful attention as I opened Aol, one day, while checking my e-mail.
While the worry and unrest that is ever being stirred into the orldwide cauldron may indeed be based on real concerns, the combined ingredients in this pressure-cooker are at best a recipe for misconception. I read the "terrifying true story" of the Shingles virus running rampant in a long term care facility and became far more terrified that I would die of a super-virus than I have ever been impressed with the eradication of serious illnesses like polio, measles, or smallpox. I’m convinced by focusing on my fears, ever-reacting to my worries, and accepting this culture of fear as a given, not only affects my subsequent reasoning, living, and faithfulness, that fears in fact will become me. My fears will tell me how to spend my money, secure relationships, lead my grandchildren by example, vote in an election, and participate in (or isolate myself from) society. I can become no different than Chicken Little or the slave in Jesus's parable who withdrew in fear of his master and buried his talent in the sand.
Yet the harsh rebuke of this slave in the parable of the talents makes it clear that safe-living is not an option, nor an ultimate value, in the kingdom of God. I’m wondering, as I write, if there might be a distinctively Christ like alternative to the atmosphere of fear that is so pervasive and contagious? I find the parable of the talent asks me to see the power and control I allow to masquerade as security and so convince myself that I live wisely, perhaps even morally upright, when I am really living in fear. These fears will move me to withdraw from the kingdom Jesus has called me to join and join with him in announcing. Instead of moving further up and farther into the kingdom he proclaimed is in and around me, I dig for my soul a place in the outer darkness.
Father, God, I thank You this morning that there is indeed an alternative. But I confess I’m finding it neither safe nor easy. It is involving, intentionally, laying down my fears to follow Christ, Your Son, with faith's daring. It involves opening my life to a world that often scares me, and realistically rejecting the anxiety of a world convinced the sky is falling. May Your beloved Holy Spirit guide me into the alternative of a cultural kingdom of hospitality and abundance, vulnerability and generosity, love and self-sacrifice; all of which I’ve found Christ shaped with his living and dying, and has invited me to do the same. I pray this in accordance with what Your Son told His disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Amen 
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