Blessed Fear

A Reflection on the Psalm for December 29th, 2019:
The Feast of the Holy Family

Psalm 128

R. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you. 

R. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. 

R. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. 

R. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

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Fear is not always a bad thing. 


When I was quite young, my family and I were at our favourite fajita restaurant. The restaurant was full of steaming hot skillets and piping hot plates, and I was a curious kid (but mostly, I was stubborn). When our skillet of veggies and chicken, which had just come out of the oven, came to our table one night, I heard the reminder I had heard during every other visit at that restaurant: “Megan don’t touch the skillet, it’s very hot”. But that night, I had decided that I would take it upon myself to see if the skillet was in fact too hot. I was always told how hot the skillet was, but what was the harm in investigating? I reached out my little index finger to touch it out of stubbornness, and I was met with a sharp pain followed by a blister on the tip of my finger from touching the skillet that I was told over and over by my mother not to touch. 


Now, as a 20 year old, every time I get a hot plate of food or a steaming tea, I wait until I am sure that it has cooled down enough for me to touch it. I learned my lesson after the fajita incident. I now have a fear of being burned by hot food. And this fear definitely helps me. Most of the time, fear is a feeling we have instilled in us in order to deter us from doing things that will harm and hurt us. My mother didn’t want me to get hurt, so she tried to help me to develop the fear without having to experience the pain. This is what God tries to do for us. He wants us to steer clear of the bad things that will harm us. He doesn’t want us to have to experience the hurt in order for us to learn that lesson, but sometimes we are stubborn. Sometimes after we take over the control and do our own investigating, we learn our lesson, but with consequences. 


When I was first learning about faith, the phrase “Blessed are those who fear the Lord” really confused me. Doesn’t God love us? Why would He want us to fear Him? Well, God wants us to have fear because He loves us. We need fear to help us to stay away from the bad. A parent wants to help you fear those bad things to keep you from the hurts in life. This fear is not to decrease our quality of life, but to give us fullness of life. We fear disappointing our parents. We want to please them and make them happy. It is a good fear that helps us to grow closer to God, to respect Him, and to love God like the Father that He is. I pray that I may have these experiences so that I can trust in God to guide me. Amen. ​



Megan Noye

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