People unconsciously wonder what
it’ll take to be happy, content, able, responsible, to be at peace, and to be
loved, and a myriad of other things. The thing that stands between us and our
obtaining of those things, I’d suggest, is courage.
What if it was simply courage that
stood in our way? What if courage was all we needed to ignite our capacity?
Even if we accepted this we’d not brim the joy.
That’s because courage is the
hardest thing. Even if we could see that courage was the key to unlock our
problems of faith and adhering to the truth and seeking an acceptable love,
we’d shrink, because we intuitively know it’s hard going.
Let’s explore this further in the
ways of faith, truth, and love.
The Way Of Faith And Its Reliance On
Courage
People who have faith necessarily
have courage. One doesn’t go without the other. And whilst many may believe
faith is ‘what’ we believe, the faith required of the Christian—in order to
please God (Hebrews 11:6)—is operating in the application of their faith: what they do.
Faith is a doing thing.
If we’re courageous and go forth
upon the things our hearts are calling us to do, we redeem the blessings of
faith, which aren’t always seen for what they are, for they’re often costly.
But the way of courage is definitely the way of faith; the opposite is also
true.
The Way Of Truth And Its Significance In
Defining Courage
We cannot be courageous, not fully
so, if we don’t stick to the truth. This is impossibly hard in many of our
relationships; those that have been set up on wobbly rocks—just about all our
relationships have some frailties.
In social situations, most of all,
we’re tested for courage by our compromises regarding the truth, and almost
every compromise has us feeling guilty or ashamed (or some other negative
emotion) as we reflect. By not living up to the truth we didn’t achieve our
potential. We become our own hardest critics.
Perhaps we didn’t know how to hold
the situations in truth. Some situations, as we’ve mentioned, are impossible.
Many times the truth cannot safely be held. These are just the social realities
of life. This is another reason why courage is the hardest thing.
The Way Of Love And Its Need Of Courage
Whether it’s romantic or not, it
takes an enormous amount of courage to express our true feelings of love. We
fear rejection and we also fear exposing ourselves in the performance of love.
The first fear is outcome-based.
We don’t want to be reminded that there exists within each of us, deeper below,
a part that has been rejected; a part of ourselves we feel is worthy of rejection, no less. If the
issue of truth came to bear, nothing of our core beings is worthy of
rejection—God loves us unconditionally.
The second fear is process-based.
We fear performing our spoken and unspoken acts of love because we might come
across fake, or it won’t come out right, or for many other reasons.
Love requires courage to complete
it. When we’re courageous we can love, and we’re good lovers.
***
Courage is the thing that stands
between us and our goals, for happiness, peace, and the achievement of love.
Because it’s a hard thing to do we need to gently nurture it; not being
critical of our failures in courage. If there’s one thing we can pray for most
of all it’s to have more courage.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
Graphic Credit: Marte
Marie Forsberg.
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