Rules are mostly meant to be broken...

"Rules are mostly meant to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind."

-Douglas MacArthur

I have always felt some comfort in rules. If things follow rules they can be understood. I could ask myself, “why am I feeling sick?” and my mind would answer, “because you stayed up too late and had too much sugar.” Fine. The sickness is boxed, controlled by some rules and acting as it should. It is not scary, I understand it. I know what to do to fix it. If I sleep more and don’t eat sugar I will get better. At home, I used to comfort myself with thoughts like “there can’t be a poisonous spider there, there aren’t any that live in this climate” or “this is safe to eat, there are standards about how these things are processed”. De facto, my practice was to take fear, add the right knowledge, and watch the fear melt away. It worked pretty well as long as the amount that I learned about the world that dismissed my fears kept up with the amount I learned to fear. 

Here in Guyana there is less system and the rules are a little less known. There could well be a bushmaster in the thicket-no one really knows. The peanut butter may or may not be safe to eat. No one tests the water for harmful amounts of lead or mining run off. Call 911 and the ambulance will be here soon? Good luck. The rules are not always followed or just plain don’t exist. Before coming here I tried to fight it. I researched and read all that I could about Guyana, hoping the stuff my brain with all the “right” pieces of information to combat the fears I knew I would encounter. I tried to learn everything I could so I would always know what to do. Fortunately, that didn’t work. The information has not been enough offset the fears.

Since coming here, I have had fears here that I can not logically dismiss and so I must have faith. This is freeing. Instead of trusting in my own knowledge I can now trust in the knowledge of an all knowing God. We have not been called to live in fear. Knowing a God of love, our actions, decisions, and interactions can not be fear based. We have been called to live by faith and, knowing a God of love, our actions, decisions, and interactions must be faith based. Not foolish, not rash, but trusting in the love and knowledge of an all-knowing God.