He is here, he is armed,
Run, run, run and hide
He is mean and won’t fight fair
Run, run, run and hide
He is loose with no restraint
Run, run, run and hide
He will main, He will kill
So run and hide and look not back.

I ran and ran but can’t escape
I hide my best, he hunts me still
I chose to stand and run no more
I chose to fight and hide no more:
Courage swayed the unswerving fiend
My faith knocked him off his feet.
Whenever fear roars at you again
Silence him with voice of faith.

Faith has been my lifestyle, the only way I have known to live. All through my teenage and early adult life, I was a fearless heart. I did the good, the great, and the bizarre in my zeal for the Lord, with absolute confidence in God’s deliverance and He saw me through every single adventure I now tag exploits. Then came a time I experienced some personal tragedies that shook my very foundations. My faith crumbled and I became a very fearful version of who I once was. Then I realized that contrary to previous perception of me as a strong and courageous Christian, it is in my weakness and fearfulness that I needed faith more than ever before; faith for things I once dared without second thoughts, faith for even the normal daily activities you wouldn’t think twice about.

Fear became a constant battle I daily fight; fear on the road, fear at home, fear for loved ones, fear of outsiders. I don’t know what happened to that solid foundation of faith and courage I had lived almost all my life. When I needed it at the most critical times of my life, I found it not. When I felt most vulnerable, I found not faith but fear. I wanted to run, very far from my realities. I wanted to hide from all I knew and all that knew me. I wanted to disappear. Death became no longer appalling, instead appealing: a bearable end but one I can’t take except it takes me. Have you heard that death never comes when you want it?

As a believer, suicide is not an option. Believers know the consequences of taking their own life: that knowledge is a restraint. When you don’t have Christ and you don’t know, the rest is unpleasant history. Often we consider people who commit suicide as extremely selfish people who don’t care about the after effects of their decision. I once referred to suicide as the coward’s cheapest escape. Truth is, you can’t truthfully tell until you get there. It is not always a selfish thoughtless move: there is more about it than meets the eyes. When you hit the end of the road and everything and everyone is going for your throat, hitting without thinking, reaching for what they can get, with hope of relief or end so oblivious, the rest of death becomes the most alluring.

For those who can’t end it by themselves, they hope for something to. At that point, the least of your considerations are not what others will do because you are too spent to bother. You may be in a position where you are being kicked back and forth. You don’t mean to cause problems or add to the issues. You reasons that since it appears you have become their problem, death will seem more appealing to give each party reprieve; win-win; they don’t have to deal with you and your issues anymore, and you don’t have to take one more drama of theirs again: rest for everyone.

Yet, it is at such times that God arises, an ever present help in times of need, reaching where no other can, soothing, assuring, rescuing from depths of hell. Losses can be heart-breaking, especially loss of loved ones but our losses are not eternal. They are recoverable in Christ. That is why God forbids us to wear sorrow like the godless. Because of Christ and His finished work on Calvary, our losses are temporal and death but a passing phase. I don’t know what you have lost, what you are losing, and what you will lose. I do know that irrespective of the presentations and implications of our circumstances, we are not hopeless, we are not helpless: Christ in us is our sure hope of glory. Be comforted.

Glory!