Download - The Perfect Wisdom Web

Be Not Afraid Couragewhere I was sitting. He felt forsaken, but he prayed, “Notmy will, but Thy will.” Somehow that gave me courageand strength, and I felt I would get through whatevermight lie ahead.Describing in his journal his own anxieties about death,Leo Tolstoy reveals a similar approach to overcomingthem:I like my garden, I like reading a book, I like caressinga child. By dying I lose all this, and therefore I do notwish to die, and I fear death. It may be that my wholelife consists of such desires…and if that is so I cannothelp being afraid of what will prevent their gratification.But if they have given way and been replaced in me byanother desire – the desire to do the will of God, to givemyself to him in my present state and in any possiblefuture state –then the more my desires have changedthe less I fear death, and the less does death exist forme.Anne is back in Israel as I write, working in a Bethlehemneighborhood patrolled by snipers and lit up at nightby exploding shells. There are few foreigners left in thearea. Yet she remains courageous. “I pray every day144