There’s no room for it

I John 4: 18a

There is no fear in love. NIV

This is one small part of a beautiful passage in I John that includes at least three reminders not to worry.  This verse caught my eye when I was reading the paraphrase of this passage in The Message this morning.  There, this sentence reads, “There is no room in love for fear.” MSG

There is no room in love for fear … I love that!

Many years ago, I moved from a large sunny apartment in the suburb of a big city, to a very tiny one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.  I knew that the space was roughly half the size of what I had, but, I’d done the math … everything would fit.  On the day the moving company came to pack my things, I asked them not to empty the drawers of my dresser, and just ship them full of clothes.  The mover wouldn’t do that.  The guy was completely box crazy.  He put everything I owned in big, bulky cardboard boxes.  I kept telling him that the new apartment was much, much smaller, but, he and his crew would not listen … they kept quoting “the rules.”  I found out later that my company paid the mover by the number of boxes shipped … it’s true that what gets measured and rewarded, gets done.

In any case, when we got to my new apartment, the movers set up my bed and moved in my furniture, which did all fit, except for three drawers of my dresser that wouldn’t open because they were blocked by the bed.

And then, they started bringing up all those boxes!  It was not part of their contract to unpack them, just to deliver them.  Box after box after box came through the door.  They stacked them everywhere.  On the bed, on the couch and in the kitchen.  At the very end, I was standing out in the hall as they put in the last boxes … stacked as tall as I am, in the foyer, with just enough space to open and close the door.

I literally put a litter box on top of one of the boxes, a bowl of food and a bowl of water behind the door, let my two cats out of their crate and locked the door.  I went back to temporary housing. There was no room in that apartment for me.

There is no room in love for fear!

In the same way that I could not have put even one more box into that apartment, God’s love is brimming over … there is no room for fear or for worry if we will allow ourselves to be filled with His love and with His Spirit and with trust for Him.

That’s what I’ll think about today.