There is one barrier to love that deserves special mention because it is so crucial to the second call of Jesus Christ- Fear. Most of us spend considerable time putting off the things we should be doing or we would like to do, but are afraid to do. We are afraid of failure. We don’t like it, we shun it, we avoid it because of our inordinate desire to be thought well of by others. So we come up with a thousand brilliant excuses for doing nothing. We put off things, waste the energies of life and love that are within us. And the judgment of the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado on the girl who perpetually procrastinated falls on us: ‘She’ll never be missed; no, she’ll never be missed.’
Each of us pays a heavy price for our fear of falling flat on our faces. It assures the progressive narrowing of our personalities and prevents exploration and experimentation. As we get older, we only do thing we do well. There is no growth in Christ Jesus without some difficulty and fumbling. If we are going to keep growing we must keep risking failure throughout our lives. When Max Planke was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of quantum theory, he said, ‘Looking back over the long and labyrinthine path which finally lead to discovery, I am vividly reminded of Goethe’s saying that men will always be making mistakes as long as they are striving toward something.’”
-Brennan Mannning in The Ragamuffin Gospel
