The last decade or so in our country has been quite a wild ride. Even just politically, we went from President Obama, to President Trump, to President Biden, to Trump again. The pendulum swinging wildly left to right and back. To a certain extent, whenever the opposing party’s candidate is elected, there’s a lot of fear that circulates. “What will happen now? What will happen to us? Will the other guy dismantle our whole way of life? Will the whole world come to an end?”

There probably will be changes, though, as we’ve seen, just because you have a president of one party or the other, doesn’t mean the rest of the government is behind him. Still, there are usually changes and they can be pretty profound.

As upsetting as the change is political leadership may be, it rarely happens all by itself. The rest of life contributes its fair share of problems. Who was president had little to do with the outbreak of COVID, but the changeover from one president to another served to add more chaos to the mix. It wasn’t a fun time, but it also wasn’t all that new.

We get these major periods of upheaval every few years. 9/11 shined a spotlight on Islam, at least for a little while, and the fear of terrorist activity took hold across the country. We could go back to each of the wars over the last century, each threatened to upend society in one way or another. Even though the US wasn’t in direct danger during Korea and Vietnam, the cultural shifts back home certainly had an effect on how people lived. World War I was described as the “war to end all wars.” We’d never really seen war on this kind of scale before. Of course, it was not the war to end all wars because we were embroiled in another world war only a couple of decades later. Even when we weren’t in open hostilities over the decades that followed, the Cold War still had everyone on edge. At any point someone would be hitting the big red button and that would be the end of life as we know it.

Wars, pandemics, climate change, giant meteors, civil unrest, the collapse of western society, all sorts of things have been held up as the end of all things. There’s always someone shouting about one or the other, groups of people banding together to sound the wake up call to some looming disaster.

There’s always been something to fear. There’s always been some great evil just off on the horizon that threatens to wash you away. Nowadays, as if things weren’t bad enough, people actively dig through social media to find all of the terrible things going on out there they didn’t even know existed. It just continues one of the hallmarks of the news industry that has been that way for decades. Bad news always gets more attention than good news.

Fear, fear on a huge scale, fear that something will happen that a destructive force will come sweeping through that will either kill you and your family or make life miserable, some kind of dystopian wasteland where we’re all scrabbling over scraps of food and finding shelter from roving bandits.

The church in Thessalonica isn’t so much thinking about a dystopian wasteland, but there is some question about when the end will come. The day Christ returns is supposed to be a glorious day, the full and final triumph of God over evil forever, but those kinds of ends are always coupled with a certain amount of fear. While evil will never truly win, all of the forces of Satan are still at work, fighting back to the best of their ability. He stirs up his allies to fight against the church, to put down God’s people, to stop the spread of the Gospel and the message of salvation.

Satan loves stoking people’s pride. If he can get them to be confident in their own abilities, their own achievements, or anything else, then they cease to be a threat to him. He has many lures to draw people away from trusting in God and putting their trust in other things instead. Often, people don’t even realize they’re trapped. They fall victim to Satan’s lies and end up working with him whether they realize it or not.

But that’s not the only tool Satan has to work with. If he can’t lure you out of the safety of the sheepfold by convincing you that you can handle yourself, then he can try a more straightforward method: scaring you out. There are all sorts of scary things out there and all of them lurk in the shadows. You catch glimpses of them here and there, but they hide and wait for the best moment to strike. Like a haunted house, you go through life knowing any one of the things you’re looking at could suddenly come alive and attack you.

The church of St. Paul’s day dealt with this issue. The gospel message was outright rejected by many. It was foreign. It was unsettling. It was a threat to their way of life. Motivated individuals and even whole cities rose up against the apostles and evangelists that came to town in many places. They didn’t want the gospel to gain a foothold and upend their livelihood, their social status, their sense of security, or their own belief system. It wouldn’t be very long before this resentment would spread across the empire and Christians everywhere Rome held sway would be in fear for their lives. They would be arrested, interrogated, and forced to recant their beliefs. If they didn’t, they knew exactly what they were in for. Gruesome, bloody torture and eventually an even more gruesome death.

Many gave in to the fear. Many decided that trusting God was only going to lead to their death and they chose to walk away instead. The torture and death those Christians faced was real. The lie that Satan perpetrated was about the extent of his ability to harm those people. Yes, torture. Yes, death. But no more than that. Once any of those persecuted Christians died, they were entirely beyond his ability to hurt them.

Fear, fear that drives you to extremes. Fear that drives you to run in a panic. Fear that drives you to forget everything you know, everything that has happened to you. Satan uses that kind of fear, telling you the end is coming for you, for your family, for everything you hold dear. He wants you to panic. He wants you to run. He wants you to forget, to leave the safety of the sheepfold and seek your own shelter in the darkness, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, the threat will pass you by.

As St. Paul speaks to the church, he knows what their situation is. He knows they are surrounded by enemies on all sides. He knows the kind of reception they get by many of their neighbors and the government in particular. He knows they will be hated, reviled, hunted, and executed. He knows that fear will become a greater and greater part of their lives as Satan starts pointing out the threat the church poses to the pagan religions and power structures of Rome.

Rome may be roused to action. Violence against the church may increase. Wars may break out. Volcanos may erupt. Floods may sweep everything away. Still, despite how grim it all looks, this is not the end. It may look bleak. I may be painful. It may even kill you, but it will not be the end, not for you, and not for creation. Satan may be a powerful force and the world may be full of sin and evil, but only God makes the rules. Only he sets the schedule. His plans will prevail no matter what else may happen in this world.

There are some who live unafraid of what goes on around them because, in their minds, none of it matters anyway. This is the attitude of those who walk through life with a Zen-like demeanor, or those with the Hakuna Matata, “no worries” lifestyle. It’s a mindset that separates from the world and the responsibilities that being in the world carries. If nothing matters, then there’s nothing to worry about.

But there are things that do matter. There are things that have value. There are things that I’m responsible for. The people God has specifically put into my life for me to care for, protect, nurture, and guide. The people around me in the community in general, and my family in particular, should matter to me because they matter to God and God has given me the duty to take care of them.

That means what happens to them affects me. I can fear for my own life, and I can fear for their lives, their livelihood, their mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. I can let the fear of what goes on in the world around me drive my decisions for myself and for them. I can let fear drive me into temporary safety and eternal ruin.

The end that St. Paul describes isn’t in our hands. It isn’t in Satan’s hands. It isn’t in anyone’s hands, except God alone. He alone decides how and when his plan unfolds. This is how it has ever been, from the very beginning. Every act of grace and mercy has been at his hands and his directing. The coming of Christ to save us from our sins was planned before God spoke light into being. God’s message of grace, which brought you here, was planned by him as well, calling you out of the world of fear and darkness, here where the light of Christ overcomes the darkness, and shows you that all of the scary monsters hiding in the darkness can do little to hurt you.

We are fragile creatures, slow to trust, quick to doubt, quick to run and hide whenever anything scary shows up. Christ has already defeated death. The promise given long ago to Adam and Eve has been fulfilled. Satan struck out at Christ, but instead of bringing about Jesus’ end, he merely sealed his own fate. It’s a repeated theme in medieval artwork that depicts Christ, especially as he is on the cross or as he rises from the tomb, under his feet lies the wily serpent, crushed and motionless. Satan cannot bring about your end, much less the end of the world.

You may be hesitant to come to Christ and ask for his forgiveness for your fears and doubts. Our constant desire to seek safety elsewhere, when we know, deep down, that the only safety to be found in Christ, may lead you to think there is no coming back. Eventually he will just leave us out there in the darkness. But, he will not. He promised to conquer the power of death and to end the power of sin. He promises to forgive that sin and put it away, to keep it from being a barrier between us, from being a barrier preventing us from returning to the sheepfold and the protection of the shepherd.

Do not be afraid to come to him, asking for forgiveness for your fears and doubts. Do not be afraid of the end, either for yourself, for those around you, or for the world. It will come when God plans for it and not before. There may be sadness for a time, but that time will be temporary. Jesus has conquered death. He has conquered sin. He has set eternity before you, full of light and life. His plans include you and he will keep you safe, just as he always has.