A New Year's Eve Prayer

Deuteronomy 1:17, 21, 29, 3:2, 22 (verses 14-18 of 145)

“Don’t be afraid of them. GOD, your God—he’s fighting for you.”

Dear Reader,

If you’ve been following along, you know that my goal is to write a short meditation on each of the Bible’s 145 “Don’t be afraid” verses. I’m doing something today that is a bit of a cheat—I’m lumping five of those verses together and covering them all at once.

In the preface to Deuteronomy, The Message translator Eugene Peterson notes that Deuteronomy is perhaps the longest sermon ever given. It is a series of sermons that Moses gives to the people of Israel just before they cross the River Jordan into the Promised Land, a land he will never see. He is about to die after giving this sermon, so he’s putting everything in it. And he begins by reminding the Isralites how far they’ve come with God by their side.

The first four verses noted above are echoes of “Don’t be afraid” verses we’ve seen before. They are part of a re-telling of the Israelites’ 40 years since leaving Egypt, the turning points in their journey that delayed and diverted them, until they finally reached the place they are now. Each “Don’t be afraid” verse acknowledges the Israelites’ very real fear, while also urging them to recognize a higher power over it. The fifth verse is Moses giving encouragement and reassurance to his assistant, Joshua, who is about to take over leading the people of Israel.

Here is something that I think I’ve learned about fear in this journey with you so far. We can’t make fear go away, but an antidote to fear—or at least a strong counter force— is to remember times in the past when we were afraid, and yet we survived because whatever was causing our fear was not as powerful as the One who loves us.

That’s it. I think that’s one of the important messages Moses wanted to give his beloved people in his last sermon to them. And he does it by asking them to remember all the times when that proved true, because it’s easy to forget, or even choose never to see, how God accompanies us.

This past weekend, my car broke down on a road trip. It was an expensive repair, though I’ve had worse. Still, I was feeling very bitter (read fearful here) about this unexpected expense in my budget.

And yet. Miraculously, the car got us to our destination, my 89-year-old mother’s home where my daughter and I were driving to take her to lunch for her birthday. The car got us 120 miles through a driving rainstorm before it showed signs of distress. Then, with my mother in the car, we called a local repair shop. The employee there, Hillary, was working alone, but she made sure to get us in that day, a Saturday, but first she encouraged us to go have lunch with my mother. Afterwards, the technician diagnosed the problem, and—miracle of miracles—the shop had the part. We were back on the road within a few hours, and made it home that day just after nightfall. We were never stranded, we did not have to rent a car or hire a tow truck or spend the night in another city. My daughter remained positive and supportive the whole time, especially as she watched the clouds of worry take over my face. So the next day when I complained about how much the repair was, I (eventually) caught myself and tried focusing instead on all the small miracles that happened to us on that trip.

New Year’s Eve is often centered on celebrating and looking forward to the New Year. But it’s worth noting that before Moses asks the people of Israel to imagine their future, he reminds them of their past where there is so much evidence of God’s faithfulness. If we examine the fears we faced in 2024, would we also find evidence of God’s faithfulness to us? My hope and prayer is that, looking back, we will see as real as fear is, it’s not as powerful as the One who loves us.

Photo by Isabela Kronemberger on Unsplash