May 26, 2020
Life is Risk
Life is risky. How many people get out alive? (I’ve heard that from two sources this week, and it got me thinking…)
Our goal since the beginning of time has been to build this net of safety around our family to allow our offspring to grow in relative peace – to be fruitful and multiply. How we each define peace greatly fluctuates based on our culture, time, and prosperity.
Think through culture and time. Isn’t relative safety for her offspring the goal of every mother who ever lived?
Imagine Eve carrying her children outside of the garden. Even though animals were still peaceful then, there were dangers that had arisen. I wonder if she lamented over what was lost or considered her time peaceful.
Imagine being one of Noah’s daughters in law. You grew up in a time when every step you took was surrounded by evil and except for the tiny oasis of your husband’s family unit you felt scared to go anywhere. You couldn’t go home. Now you are post-flood and raising your children in a world where peace is your constant – except for the new storms. How thankful you are to be in such peace!
Imagine you are a Jewish mother raising her children under Roman occupation. The slightest whim of a passing legion, an unruly governor, insane emperor, or a bandit troupe can take your harsh living conditions and twist them into certain death. How do you dare to plan for the future when you know only scattered moments of peace? When the odds are that maybe 20% of the village’s children will live to maturity? One in five of your children will die before adulthood – how can we in this culture fathom this?
Imagine you are an orphan whose parents both perished in a famine and you were lucky to have been taken in by another family instead of doomed to die or languish into the horrid world of child slavery. You are second class in your home with little hope of being more than a worker paid in room and board, but at least you are not starving. You fear famine and disease, ugly monsters who still stare in the windows of your village hungrily; where can you find peace?
Think of stories. Fiction, non-fiction, legends, lore. Don’t most of these follow someone who chooses to do something risky to help others, find an answer, discover a cure, or save someone or something they love? Risk-takers. Once I read, and many times have heard quoted, “in order to live, you have to take risks.” Honestly, what activity doesn’t come with risk?
Across times, across cultures, across this world, what we in the “first world” countries of the twenty-first century know as peace is something most people who have come before us would have thought at heaven. Consider that in most places and times in the world, the thought that you will see all of your children become adults is rare. We are in shock at this? There are people even today who live in cultures where lack of medicines, inadequate nutrition, and the possibility of becoming collateral damage in a conflict are normal.
A hundred years ago, the simple concept of sanitation was so unknown to the majority that we can’t understand. People dying of fevers and botulism without medical assistance? Do we even hear of food poisoning in our comfortable first-world culture? Rarely. Once upon a time importing unknown food products into new markets such as potatoes into England resulted in thousands of deaths because people ate the wrong parts of the plant! We don’t hear of that often, do we?
When we consider breathing air too risky to take a walk for exercise, I consider my life not worth living. I want to live. I want to take risks. I drive in a car to get to and from work – great risk is involved in that. I want my children to enjoy the green growing outside. I want them to run freely, love deeply, play with neighbors, and live. I live by the same code I always have: I trust that God will decide my time and I will live my life to show my passion through everything I do. I will not avoid stopping to help someone with their flat tire because she isn’t wearing a mask. I will offer help. I will not dampen my offers of help, comfort, food, or a listening ear because of some sickness – I would still talk about Jesus if it was illegal. Why would I not show His love? I choose not to be fearful. I am so blessed to live in a place where the gunshot wound that killed Lincoln could now be healed, cojoined twins sharing a brain can be safely separated, babies born at 20 weeks can be nurtured to full strength; medical miracles have come from our increased knowledge in nutrition, anatomy, biology, and sanitation… and so much more.
I will not be afraid. I have always washed my hands, changed clothes when coming in from work, washed and changed after visiting someone who was sick, cleaned my food, and kept my home and family clean. I understand that we have tools to keep us healthy. The rest is up to God. If I am to hide from this fear, why not from the fear of every other disease that circulates? Why not hide in my home away from items I am allergic to? Why not hide from the fear of getting in a fatal car accident?
I refuse to allow fear to control my life! For you have not been given the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ~ 2 Timothy 1:7
I understand being cautious. If you have a preexisting co-morbidity, you probably already keep yourself distant from possible infections that would aggravate your condition. You do not go out in public without taking precautions. The responsibility of your own health is on you, not everyone else around you. No one understands your personal strengths and weaknesses better than you. You are weighing your risks.
But I am willing. I am willing to take the risk of driving to work, the risk of walking into the farmer’s market, the risk of hugging my neighbor, the risk of helping a woman with a flat tire, the risk of adopting a new pet, the risk of living.
This choice is one each person in each culture, stage, time, and place must make for themselves. If you choose to live without fear, you must understand and accept the risks. Just as you understand that a person may deny your offer of help, they may not wish to go out of their home, the may wish to keep everyone around them ten feet away. That is each person’s choice.
Learn. Read. Question. We have more access to more knowledge than ever before. Research. Then make up your own mind and take the risks you are willing to take.
Only a relative handful of people choose to research a mountain, outfit themselves, and climb to the summit; the risks are great – they could even die! But when they reach the summit, the rush they get from their massive accomplishment usually makes them enthusiastic to begin planning a new mountain climb before they have even returned to base.
You must accept the risks of life to truly live. I choose not to live in fear.
Thank you for Reading!
Type at you next time,
~Nancy Tart