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It is human nature to run from disaster, making it all the more remarkable when people do not. In World War II, Adolf Hitler tried to break Britain’s resistance by relentless bombing raids targeting London. As prime minister, Winston Churchill was a target; nonetheless, he insisted on watching the nightly raids from his roof and walked the bombed streets with the smoke still rising. As he walked, he wept. With a handkerchief in one hand and a walking stick in the other, he would call out encouragement, rallying Londoners in the middle of ruin. In the thick of war with no victory in sight, he filled the radio waves with a call to courage: “It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour and more foolish to lose heart and courage. . . . We shall not fail or falter, we shall not weaken or tire.”
The drone of bombers may not fill our ears, but circumstances can fill us with foreboding and fear as smoke rises from the streets of our lives. Life in a fallen world requires courage—strength that exercises itself in the face of fear or pain. Sometimes that courage is a bold action born from conviction and confidence. At other times, courage is as quiet as persisting faithfully another day. Isaac Watts contrasted these two forms of Christian courage:
Active courage is a steadiness and bravery of mind that is undaunted at opposition or threatening dangers. Passive valor is that constancy of soul that enables us to bear sufferings without repinings or outward tokens of sinking or despondency.
Our nature is to turn inward and shrink back when things fall apart. But holy courage compels us out of ourselves in active trust toward God and love for others. We are always striving for rest, but the Christian life is one of active obedience that develops steadfastness and courage. Churchill’s walking the streets is a picture of the Christian’s call to respond with courage to adversity and to encourage each other with boldness and cheer.
Psalm 46 is from someone experiencing so much anguish that it felt as if the earth itself was collapsing in on him. In the middle of disaster and darkness, he holds up the shield of faith and shouts with confidence that God is his refuge and strength. With this, he extinguishes the fiery arrows of the evil one that set fire to fearful hearts and minds—arrows designed to weaken our trust in God, to cause us to falter in obedience, and to doubt the faithfulness of God’s Word.
Churchill appealed to the glory of the British spirit of grit and determination as well as the coming glory of defeating the enemy. We have a greater reason for courage: we follow Jesus, who is the overcomer of the world, the devil, and death. In Him, we are more than conquerors, and since He is ours, we sing in darkness with the hymn: “We fear no powers, not of earth or sin or death. He sees and blesses in worst distresses.”