{"id":4362,"date":"2025-01-22T07:52:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T12:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4362"},"modified":"2025-01-22T07:52:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T12:52:20","slug":"the-word-from-down-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/22\/the-word-from-down-under\/","title":{"rendered":"The Word from Down Under"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

I love caves.

I was in elementary school when I had my first chance to experience a real limestone cavern. I joined my family on a stroll through Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and I was hooked for life.

More than 4,000 caves stretch for hundreds of miles beneath my home state of Indiana. The vast majority are non-commercial and off the beaten path, which means that spelunkers or \u201cwild cavers\u201d are on their own when it comes to lights, equipment, and safety.

I have crawled, climbed, chimneyed, and sloshed through chilly subterranean streams at a number of those sites, heading underground at least once every year for four decades.

Hoosier caves maintain a steady year-round temperature of 54 degrees, which means July spelunking expeditions are refreshingly cool, while January adventures feel miraculously warm.\u00a0

Caves are rugged, fascinating, and full of unexpected twists and turns. They often feature blind crickets, sightless fish, and bats that use sonar to effortlessly navigate pitch darkness. Most caverns aren\u2019t as beautiful as the ones featured on the cover of National Geographic<\/em>, but even modest cave formations are always worth seeing.

Since many underground corridors are little more than narrow sieves through hundreds of feet of limestone bedrock, caving is not for the claustrophobic. I feel blessed to be a claustromaniac<\/em> \u2013 someone who enjoys the feeling of being closed in or squeezed into tight places. In one of my favorite caves, it\u2019s necessary to do a belly crawl for 30 feet through a mostly water-filled, two-foot-tall passage. You remove your helmet and tilt your head sideways to catch a breath of air.

It doesn\u2019t get much better than that.

I love caves. But I also fear caves.

Water \u2013 the same natural force that carves out all those rooms and passageways \u2013 can make caverns exceedingly dangerous. \u201cWet\u201d caves are vulnerable to flash floods, potentially trapping spelunkers for hours or days.

I once guided a group of 20 high school kids into a cave after rain had been falling for hours on end. I was pretty sure the cave was safe. But \u201cpretty sure\u201d doesn\u2019t cut it when it comes to spelunking safety. That trip was almost a half century ago, but I still shudder in bed sometimes late at night, grateful to God that the number of kids who exited that cave was the same number that went in.\u00a0\u00a0

The National Park Service, in order to maximize the comfort and safety of visitors to America\u2019s most popular caves, provides level paths, staircases, elevators, bright lights, and a snack bar at the end of the journey.

Spelunking, by contrast, is inherently risky. It\u2019s possible to slip and fall into crevices. It\u2019s easy to twist an elbow or wrench a knee. On one occasion one of my good friends, an experienced caver, was overcome by hypothermia. It took us an hour to help him get back outside.

If you love caves, you also need to fear caves \u2013 to cultivate a deep-seated respect for the untamed natural word. There\u2019s no contradiction in that.

The same thing is true when it comes to the realm of the Spirit.

To put it simply, I love God. But I also fear God.

In multiple places, the Bible calls us to an appropriate fear<\/em> \u2013 a deep-seated respect for the untamed God that will lead us to make wise decisions concerning the conduct of our lives.\u00a0\u201cThe fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom\u201d (Proverbs 9:10).

It\u2019s notable that Scripture never once tells us to fear the devil.\u00a0We are not to fear evil.\u00a0There is no need to fear death.\u00a0Jesus tells us not to be afraid of people who are seriously intent on harming us (Matthew 10:26-31).

But spiritual health is all about cultivating an appropriate fear of God.\u00a0C.S. Lewis, in his Chronicles of Narnia, points out several times that Aslan \u2013 the giant lion who represents Christ in that fictional domain \u2013 is not a tame lion.

Nor is the God who is really there.

Healthy fear is not to be confused with spiritual paralysis or a sense of servile terror. \u201cFearing God\u201d means choosing to take God seriously \u2013 embracing with joy his promises of mercy and grace, even while heeding his warnings when we’re tempted to succumb to disastrous choices.\u00a0

To paraphrase the fourth century theologian Augustine of Hippo, the early Church\u2019s first great thinker, life really comes down to just two choices:\u00a0We can either fear God or fear everything else<\/em>.\u00a0

Take it from a claustromaniac:

Loving and respecting the Most High God is the very best way to negotiate life\u2019s tight spots. \u00a0\u00a0
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here I love caves. I was in elementary school when I had my first chance to experience a real limestone cavern. I joined my family on a stroll through Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and I was hooked for life. More than 4,000 caves stretch for hundreds of miles beneath my home state… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[242],"class_list":["post-4362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fear-of-the-lord"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4364,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4362\/revisions\/4364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}