A Chaplain's Musings: On Rom 8:38/ or Quiet Dragons
"For I am convinced"....
This verse has been making an appearance in my reading quite a bit lately. And as I reflected on it last night, the word "convinced" kept beckoning. So I did a little word study on it;
In the Greek it is Peithos-persuade, confidence, trust, faith.
But what really caught mt attention was the Latin-Tranquillise-which the dictionary I use illustrated as "to quiet the dragons of fear and doubt."
That got me thinking about a book our eldest son read recently called "Jeremy Thatcher-Dragon Hatcher". In it a boy finds and hatches a strange egg that produces a dragon rather than the parrot he had hoped for. The dragon's characterization is far closer to a cross between Mary's little lamb and our family's big dumb black lab than to Tolkien's Smaug, or Beowolf's nemesis. And Jeremy discovers that he is able to control the beast, "not by might nor by power", but through LOVE.
And THAT got me to thinking about one of thoughts from "Abba's Child"by Brennan Manning. That we cannot surrender our impostor unless we embrace him/her. And perhaps the same holds true for my fear. In the same way that coming to terms with the fact that the drunk/junkie inside me IS me (at least in part)and accepting God's acceptance of even one such as him/me, so too the fear of pain that prods me to seek the empty solace of oblivion is not external but intrinsic to my "self". And The Father's love is extended to that me as well. And if the God of all the universe loves even that me, who am I to hate His child.
In John 17:10, Jesus says that I bring Him glory--and he didn't ask me for my opinion on the matter.
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