COUNTERING CONTINUING FEAR
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Like the people of Israel, after they had been rescued from slavery in Egypt, the people returning from exile in Babylon needed time to heal and readjust their ways of thinking and believing. After generations of oppression, living with fear, threats, and the realities of violence, the people required a period of rehabilitation to be able to live freely and without fear. While the physical slavery and subjugation had come to an end, their mindset and worldview needed recalibration—and that would take time. One of the damages that fear does to us over time is that it becomes a way of thinking, an almost automatic response to whatever confronts us. Chronic fear can shape and twist us into people who “live in constant terror every day.” In its more extreme form and with a variety of symptoms, this effect is often diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but even at a lower intensity, long-term or repeated exposure to fear and threats can have a debilitating impact. When prolonged fear progresses toward PTSD, qualified health care is vitally important, but God also offered a faith response to the people returning from Babylon. He again contrasted the temporary nature of the “mere mortals” and even the empire that had been oppressing them with His power and permanence as the One “who stretches out the heavens and who lays the foundations of the earth.” Note the present tense.
This was not something done only in the past but something that God continues to do. It was that God who now comforted them, restored them, and re-established them in freedom and fearlessness.
