Scoutmaster's Minute - Fear

From the Texas Episcopalian Volume 112, No. 3 March 2009

Fear and Faith – by Greg Garrett

“…When I was a seminarian serving at Calvary, Bastrop, John Henry Faulk’s daughter entrusted me with a story about her father, a story about fear. She asked me to tell it to folks whenever they needed it, and now seems like a pretty good time:

When John Henry Faulk was a small boy in South Austin, his momma deputized him and one of his friends, Boots Cooper, to go to the hen house and root out a chicken snake that was causing some trouble in there.

Now just going in to get some eggs is a scary thing when you are a small person. Chickens have beaks, and mean little eyes and those reptilian-clawed feet. Add a snake into that, and it’s no wonder John Henry and his friend were already a little fearful as they entered the hen house, where there were strange smells and dark shadows, and they moved slowly and cautiously toward the nesting hens, where the eggs would be, and where they’d most likely find a chicken snake if one was to be found.

Sure enough, as they drew near to one of the roosts, hearts pounding, there was a snake coiled there, and they just about jumped out of their skins.

In their panicked flight, they smacked into the side of the hen house, and then they tumbled out through the door and into the chicken yard, and then, finally, battered and covered with dust, they fled back into the house, the screen door banging behind them, to the great bemusement of John Henry’s mother. She took a look at them – winded, panicked, dirty – and she shook her head.

“Boys,” she said, “that there was just a little ol’ chicken snake. It can’t hurt you.”

“Yes’m” Boots Cooper said. “Maybe so. But there’s some things’ll scare you so bad, you hurt yourself.”

That’s exactly what happens when we’re scared bad enough – we hurt ourselves. We make decisions out of a place of fear instead of a place of faith…”