Let us consider for a little while some of the springs of human fear, and then notice how many of our fears spring from the imagination.
It has been said (and I think truly said) that life is ruled by the imagination. The things we picture and weave in glowing colors have a very powerful influence over conduct.
Often that influence is stimulative, illumining the pathway to discovery; often it creates or liberates fear. People who are highly sensitive are far more apt to be fearful than their neighbors.
There are a hundred fears that never touch the man of stolid, unimaginative nature. That is why for a certain type of person to be brave may be comparatively easy, and for another infinitely hard.
Now, the worst thing about this kind of fear is that reason is powerless to allay it. You might as soon allay a fire with good advice.
Argument is cold. It cannot banish the specters of the soul. It has no brush that can obliterate the pictures of the imagination.
But there is another way, more powerful than reason, to overcome imaginative fears, and that is the way of this inspired psalmist.
Faith is the antidote to fear. It quiets fear as the mother quiets her child. The child still dreams, but the dreams are not reality. It is the mother's arms that are reality.
So we, His children, dreaming in the darkness and sometimes very frightened by our dreams, find "underneath the everlasting arms."
~George H. Morrison~