“I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.” Psalm 3:5-6 NIV

What do you fear? As a child I was quite afraid of the dark. With all the horror movies and scary tv shows I watched, it was easy for me to assume that someone could be waiting for me, that some monster could be lurking around the next corner, somewhere in that deep blackness. Looking back I know there was nothing there, and even then I think I was smart enough to realize the boogieman isn’t real, but the unknown always outweighed my rational thoughts.

I’m finding that this same fear of the unknown is still present in my (young) adult life, but now it has nothing to do with turning off the lights. Many questions arise: where will I go? What will I do? What SHOULD I be doing? Have I been wrong this whole time? The amount of unknown circling around my head is quite frankly overwhelming and distracts me from what I do know. David, on the other hand, was not distracted.

David was not concerned about a vocation or location, he was concerned about his life! His son was trying to kill him and take the kingdom for himself. By all rights, David should have been plenty scared, but that was not his reaction. As he writes in this psalm, though his enemies outnumbered him and closed in on all sides, God was still there for him, protecting and eventually coming to his rescue.

We serve a God that is more powerful than armies, more powerful than circumstance, and more powerful than the unknown. Just as he provided for David and kept him safe, God will keep and protect his followers.

It’s time to stop losing sleep over the unknown and start resting in God’s great love.