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Key Bible Verse: "Remove your hand from me, and don't terrify me with your awesome presence" (Job 13:21). Bonus Reading: Deuteronomy 5:23-29

A few summers ago, we took a family vacation to Toronto. The guidebooks said that the CN Tower, the world's tallest freestanding structure, was a must-see. I have acrophobia, a fear of heights, but the kids said, "Aww, Dad, c'mon; we gotta go."

I was last into the elevator. As I turned around and we started the rapid ascent, I realized that this elevator rides a track up the exterior of the CN Tower and that its walls are of glass. So I was only inches from the air outside—and freefall—as the city fell away at our feet. My throat got tight and I started breathing really fast. Just hang on, I told myself; soon you'll be on the observation deck floor.

I stumbled out of the elevator, only to find that some sadist had installed a glass floor on the observation floor, so that people could walk on it, and look straight down to the surface 1,815 feet below. The kids were laughing as they walked onto the glass floor, jumped up and down, and even lay down.

"C'mon, Dad!" they yelled.

I didn't care how thick those blocks of glass were; they were installed by the contractor with the lowest bid. I wasn't going to chance it. [continued 2/21]

—Kevin Miller in PreachingToday.com

My Response: Is fear of God, like Kevin's fear of heights, reasonable or imagined?

Thought to Apply: If Christianity has never frightened us, we have not yet learned what it is. —William Temple (English diplomat & author)

Adapted from our sister site PreachingToday.com.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

God, I confess that I've minimized your breathtaking holy otherness in my mind. Restore the fear that puts my sin and your salvation into focus.

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