Article May 20, 2013 Issue

Calming fear in a crisis

Lynn Jackson

Originally published on csmonitor.com

When facing the uprising of the Nazis during World War II, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer prayed to calm the fears of his congregation. It’s written of him during this time: “[F]or him prayer was the display of the strongest possible activity.” And Bonhoeffer warned, “[W]e speak as though God and his Word were no longer as clearly present with us as they used to be” (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, pp. 317–318).

In moments of great fear it may feel as if peace and calm are not only elusive, but also gone forever, as if God and His Word are “no longer as clearly present with us as they used to be.” We may wonder if our lives will ever return to the previous state of comfort and whether our routine will ever feel ... well, routine again. We seek not only peace of mind, but peace of living, peace of being, the peace of doing. While heroic efforts saved numerous lives in both the Boston Marathon bombing and the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, the need to calm one another’s fears and society’s fears remains. I agree with Bonhoeffer that prayer is the “display of the strongest possible activity.” 

For many people, prayer is the first on the scene because it lives in the hearts and minds of those experiencing shocking moments of fear. And it continues on the scene to calm the fearful, relax the anxious, and settle the agitated. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, quotes Jesus when she writes: “To the burdened and weary, Jesus saith: ‘Come unto me.’ O glorious hope! there remaineth a rest for the righteous, a rest in Christ, a peace in Love. The thought of it stills complaint; the heaving surf of life’s troubled sea foams itself away, and underneath is a deep-settled calm” (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 19).