To Tame the Monster

Nessie. Bigfoot/Sasquatch. Grendel.  Cancer, AIDS, Zika and many other diseases. Nuclear threats, climate change and the presidential election. A thousand more named and unnamed spooks like vampires and werewolves, that make us
afraid of noises outside the light of the campfire and keep the covers over our heads. How can we maintain our sanity and calm in the face of all these fears? Well, there is a way.

Psa 104:24-26 says:
O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.
Here is the ocean, vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small.
See the ships sailing along, and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.

What a funny situation! We may miss it, reading with Western eyes, but the psalmist has just sneaked one in on us by lumping the 'great sea monster' that everyone feared in those days, "playing" in the sea with all the other creatures God made. Instead of being a fearsome creature that could destroy a sailing ship, Leviathan is reduced to the level of a smiling porpoise, tamed by the power of the Creator to be merely one of his creatures. That might have given some comfort to sailors back in the day, I suppose. But what about us, what about those days in which a "leviathan" wants to take over our lives, or at least ruin the morning? What's a person to do?

I know it's not as simple as it sounds, but the answer is "let God tame it." Psalm 118:24 says "This is the day the Lord has made; let's rejoice in it, and be glad." God made the day, all right, but he didn't make everything go wrong in it:  we have hundreds of mechanical and electronic devices, interactions with other people, and traffic, just to name a few, that can help derail what we thought would be a nice calm day. But this another day God made, so how do we find joy in it? By looking to the Creator, not the circumstances.

"In wisdom you made them all" says the psalmist. And in wisdom God steps in, or not, to change our circumstances, in order to accomplish what he alone, in wisdom, has planned for our best. The Lord of heaven and earth knows what we humans choose to do to ourselves, and knows how much some of our decisions hurt us; but he lets us continue in our foolishness, for now, and so he doesn't step in and stop every little, or big, event that threatens us. He loves us too much to make our lives soft and comfortable. Sometimes he lets us see Leviathan poke his head out of the waves, but in reality, the monster has no power over us that we don't give to him by being afraid.

If we can remember "the Lord God made them all in wisdom" and "the Lord made this day," we can stop the fear before it takes over. We can hold on in faith during tough circumstances, knowing that what we see isn't all there is, that God's wisdom will still deliver us. And we can wave at Leviathan as he plays in the sea, and enjoy the sunset over the waves.