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"Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid,
neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with
thee withersoever thou goest" Joshua 1:9
Courage is not one of the Christian virtues, though the ancient
Greeks had it as one of their four cardinal virtues. But there
is always the recognition that to be a Christian in an often
alien world requires courage of the kind shown by Jesus in
His time and place. Among the many examples of His courage
is that which He showed in a storm on a lake when everyone
else was crying out in fear of being drowned. He was fearless
and what He said and did calmed them and stilled the storm;
the cleansing of the Temple when He forcibly removed those
who were making the courtyard into a market place leaving
them in no doubt of His total condemnation of them, of their
desecration, hypocrisy and deservation.
He faced opposition and persecution in His plea for faith
in God and for the need of people to live so that in character
and conduct they demonstrated the reality of that commitment.
He was fearless so that neither the goading of His enemies
nor the coaxing of His friends dissuaded Him from what He
knew He had to do. He was not to be diverted from His God-charted
course. This verse from William Cowper is apt when applied
to Him.
"He holds no parley with unmanly fears,
Where duty bids he confident steers,
Faces a thousand dangers at her call,
And trusting to his God, surmounts them all."
It is a fact of the faith that Christians from the earliest
days have followed His example courageously and selflessly
in their witness and work for Him. They lived the kind of
life Jesus patterned for them in places, situations and circumstances
that demanded from them the Jesus kind of utmost courage.
Many of them lost their lives in His services. Like Him they
were fully aware of what was the likely end of what they felt
compelled to do in His name. Luke said this of his contemporaries.
"When they (others) saw the boldness of Peter and
John, who were obviously uneducated, common men, they were
staggered and they recognised that they had been with Jesus."
Acts 4:13
Their faith lifted them above fear and the physical weaknesses
that affected them. Paul is evidence of that, though never
a strong man he was disowned by family and friends after his
conversion; beaten up and jailed, escaping serious injury
and death by "the skin of his teeth". He went about
his work fearlessly and with an incredible enthusiasm that
never waned in spite of what was done to him.
The Christian always and everywhere needs courage to stand
firm for Christ and more than ever in days when the Christian
faith and what it represents is confronted with a secularism
whose philosophies are different, and demanding much less
from people, than the dogmas and disciplines of Christianity.
The faith is not well served when and where the Church is
suffering from disagreements on matters which prevent it from
serving God and people properly and unitedly in those ways
that are of more value and greater importance. Courage is
needed to sort out, or live with, the differences that divide
those Christians who are presently in dispute.
"Rise up and serve the Lord,
Have done with lesser things;
Give heart and soul and mind and strength,
To serve the King of Kings." W.P. Menill
We have thought of courage and Christians. It need hardly
be added that courage is a characteristic of our humanity.
We recognise supreme acts of bravery with suitable medals,
and royal and public honours nationally and locally. Frequently
attention is drawn to the courageous acts of people, children
and adults, here and everywhere in the world; for however
many its evils there are the virtues which characterise humanity
at its best and courage is one of the most desirable of them.
An emphasis of Christianity is that faith in God overcomes
fears of every kind for it encourages people to be courageous
in all circumstances; brave in the face of all perils; steadfast
in the stand for things that are right, pure, beautiful and
good in their effects on people individually and collectively.
It is courage that makes our wills conquer our fears.
"The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that would be stupid and irrational,
But he whose noble soul its fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."
Rev. Canon Dr. S.E. Long
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