“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”
Prov. 29:25
As a boy, when my dad wasn’t in a fistfight, terrorizing his mother or hustling the neighbours for spare change to buy Band-Aids for his brother who had supposedly, been “mauled by a bear”…
He was hunting.
The tools of the trade were Beagles, rifles and snares. Oh my. Unlike a clumsy Looney-Toon trap that any critter has enough sense to avoid, a snare is an almost invisible little noose positioned strategically along a familiar path that will trap and strangle its victim. If you are compassionate or squeamish, it might take you a minute to get over the hunting analogy, but I trust you can appreciate the brilliance of the symbolism.
This verse vividly warns us that the minute we live based on what people think of us, we are that unsuspecting rabbit hopping down a snare-laden trail. We live at risk of being captured and strangled at any moment.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt the choke hold too many times.
Worried about what my high school volleyball team would think if I stood against their dishonesty, I perpetuated the lie to our coach that we had indeed run our full warm-up mile and not just the half-mile we had actually run.
Trapped in a lie.
Wanting to impress my friends by being a domestic empress of a designer culinary realm, I can wallow in discontentment over my beech-coloured, builder-grade, kitchen cabinets and laminate countertop.
Entangled in envy and ingratitude.
Wanting desperately to look like I’m doing a good job at this parenting thing, I’ve parented my daughters in ways that salvaged my reputation in the moment but did not benefit, grow or shepherd their tender hearts.
Ensnared by pride and the resulting self-centered, externally-focused, graceless parenting.
Living life in fear of the opinions of people (whose estimations ultimately won’t matter at the end of my life, by the way), is a dangerous road to walk. It has the potential to choke my spiritual vitality, joy and fruitfulness. Have you felt it?
Now for the good news. God doesn’t just give us instructions on how to step over these traps. He gives us an alternative place to live if we will choose it.
“Whoever trusts in the Lord is safe…” is how the rest of the verse reads. That means that when we will live before God with a “reverent submission that leads to obedience”, as Edward Welch explains this phrase, we will be safe.
But oh, we’re so much more than just safe. The original word means: “To be set securely and inaccessibly on high.”
In a word…Untouchable.
Last spring, we enjoyed a perfect illustration of this. At first, I was frustrated that my girls kept littering our front porch with grasses and twigs. But after each daughter assured me it wasn’t her making the mess, I clued in and looked up. There, high within our covered front portico, robins were busy building a nest on our second story window ledge.
How clever.
Clever, because baby robins have a pretty high mortality rate. About 80%. Bummer. So here, these smart winged parents built their nest “securely and inaccessibly on high” where their little ones would be untouchable. No cats, squirrels or raccoons were having those eggs for breakfast. These bright birds didn’t even have to worry about rain, hail or wind as they guarded those eggs and then nurtured those naked, wide-mouthed squawkers.
Not sure who was watching who…
What beautiful imagery this verse provides for us. That, my friend, is a picture of the security and peace we enjoy when we refuse to live life by the fear of man and instead, trust, believe and act on what God says about:
Our worth
Our parenting
Our stuff
Our time
Our purpose
And everything else.
If we will do that, God lifts us away from all those snares and places us so high above it all that we are untouchable by the opinions of people – they actually fade away in glorious irrelevance. The choice is ours: Snared rabbit or safe robin. So how about we all get our Bibles out and choose to be untouchable?
It’s safe.
It’s cozy.
And the view is incredible.
If you want to see those safe little robins hatching, click the link!
https://www.facebook.com/janet.h.surette/videos/10152804893646082/