Fear Not, for I Am with You.

This morning, Theo and I were in the car on the way to preschool when Theo asked, from the back seat, "What is death?"

No lead-up. Nothing had prompted it. One minute it was an ordinary morning drive, and the next, the biggest question a person can ask.

I did my best. I told him it's when someone dies, when something comes to an end. Then I added, "But it's just the end of this life. Then we go to heaven."

And that was it. No follow-up. No "but what's heaven like?" No "will you die too?" He took it in, and went back to looking out the window.

What's interesting is how lightly he held it. Usually, he's full of follow-up questions. The biggest question in the world, and one sentence settled him. Not because it was a good answer. Maybe it was because of who said it.

He didn't need death explained. He needed to know the person driving the car wasn't afraid of it.

I wonder if that's exactly how Psalm 23 works.

David writes, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me."

Notice what David doesn't do. He doesn't explain the valley. He doesn't define death or map out what's on the other side. There is no explanation in that verse at all. There is only presence: "You are with me."

Another thing I noticed is that in the first three verses of the psalm, David talks about God. "HE makes me lie down in green pastures. HE leads me beside still waters."

But the moment the valley comes into view, "He" becomes "You." In the darkest line of the psalm, God stops being someone David talks about and becomes Someone he talks to.

Theo's question was about death, but what he was really asking was, "Am I safe?" That's the question underneath every fear.

Your question today might have nothing to do with death. It might be about money, or your family, or a decision you can't see around, or a future that won't hold still.

Fear has a hundred faces, and it likes to arrive the way Theo's question did: unprompted, in the middle of an ordinary morning.

But whatever your question is this morning, the answer is the one David found in the valley, and the one Theo found in the back seat. Not an explanation. Not a perfect answer. A presence: a trusted voice that isn't afraid.

And that voice knows fear from the inside. The night before the cross, Jesus knelt in a garden in such anguish that His sweat fell like drops of blood, and He walked into the darkest valley anyway, and came out the other side.

So when He says, "Fear not, for I am with you," He isn't dismissing your fear. He has carried it.

You don't have to understand what you're walking through. You only have to know who's walking beside you.