Good morning…
Friend #1 recently sent me this image which brings to life the quote: “Both fear and faith ask you to believe in something you can’t see. You choose.”
“Hi Sue!” she commented. “I’ve never heard this before! It’s so simple but it’s 🎯.”
I totally agree.
When hard things happen, we have a choice. Will we respond in fear or respond in faith?
Then friend #2 sent me a great article yesterday and a podcast with Ben Sasse. The words below stretched my thoughts.
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Excerpt from The Miracle That Is Ben Sasse by SCOTT SAULS, April 24, 2026
Most of us will never die of pancreatic cancer in our early to mid 50s. Most of us will die some other way, probably slower and messier and with less clarity about what’s happening to us. But every one of us, long before our time comes, will die a thousand smaller deaths along the way. A job that ends. A friendship that tanks. A body that starts to betray us. A reputation that fails to overcome the scrutiny and slander. A child who suffers. A marriage that struggles. And the question we will face in each of those smaller dyings is the same question Heidelberg puts to us on page one.
What is your only comfort in life and in death? What are you actually standing on?
If what you’re standing on is yourself, if your comfort is that you are your own and that you’ve built thick enough walls to keep the wolves out, then every setback becomes a crisis and every ache, pain, and loss becomes a haunting dress rehearsal for the day you finally go poof.
You have nowhere to stand.
But if your comfort is that you belong to a faithful Savior who bought you with his own body and blood and who is watching over you so carefully that not a hair falls from your head apart from his will, then the losses are still real, the grief is still heavy, the tears are still tender and sacred, and death is still the wicked thief Ben has called it. But you grieve as someone who belongs. You suffer as someone who has been bought with a price. And when you finally die, you will die the same way Jesus died and rose, because he has already absorbed the sting of your dying into his own.
That is what Ben is showing us.
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We get a lot of practice in our lifetime. When hard things happen, we have a choice. Will we respond in fear or respond in faith?
Cancer diagnosis. Fear or faith?
A job that ends. Fear or faith?
A friendship that tanks. Fear or faith?
A body that starts to betray us. Fear or faith?
A reputation that fails to overcome the scrutiny and slander. Fear or faith?
A child who suffers. Fear or faith?
A marriage that struggles. Fear or faith?
The Heidelberg Catechism asks two great questions: What is your only comfort in life and in death? What are you actually standing on?
God promises through our Scriptures: In the face of suffering, do not fear… Be faithful throughout your life, until the day you die, and I will give you the victor’s wreath of life (Revelation 2:10, VOICE).
Yesterday, choosing to talk these thoughts out, face to face, with friend #1 then friend #2, my fear began to shrink and my faith continued to expand.
…Sue…
