Finding Courage in Uncertain Times

Do not be afraid appears in scripture more often than almost any other command, which tells you something: it is addressed to people who are, in fact, afraid, and it keeps needing to be said.

What it never means is do not feel fear. Every person given that instruction goes on to do the frightening thing while still frightened. Gideon threshes wheat in a winepress. Esther says if I perish, I perish. Courage in the Bible is not the absence of the feeling; it is the decision made underneath it.

Three habits of people who kept going

1. They named the actual threat. Vague dread cannot be answered. A named fear can at least be examined, and half of them turn out to be smaller written down.
2. They kept the small routines. Daniel opens the windows and prays three times a day, as he had done before. The routine is the thing that survives the crisis.
3. They stayed in company. Almost nobody in these stories is alone. Fear does its worst work in isolation, which is why it argues so hard for it.

Courage is rarely a moment. It is usually the eleventh consecutive ordinary Tuesday in which you did not walk away.

For the week ahead

Pick the smallest frightening thing on your list — the phone call, the appointment, the conversation — and do that one. Not the largest. The largest is not the test; the smallest is the practice.

And if you cannot, tell someone. That counts too, and it is where most of this starts.