It Really is a Wonderful Life.

We should not fear the truth about ourselves. God doesn’t work around our messy circumstances, he works through them.

When I was 14 I decided never to hurdle again after falling flat on my face at the county games and moving from first to last place within just a few seconds. The fact that I did this while looking like a Woody Allen approximation of an athlete, sporting a head-brace and oversized NHS specs just added to the humiliation. I was done! Aside from clearing a few country fences in style when necessary, I haven’t hurdled since.

With Christmas here now, the boardgames are out, and though we love to imagine wonderful scenes of family harmony, the chances of an argument erupting and someone storming off when a loss is in sight are pretty high.

As a teacher I heard more times than I can say, "I give up, I’m never going to get it".

There is something in all of us that wants to give up when it seems that things are not going our way, when it seems that things are too difficult, when we just feel too weak. We don’t want to be "also rans" so we judge that it’s better not to run at all. There is a false sense of freedom in opting out because there is nothing against which we can be held accountable, and we can all rightly assert, as Marlon Brando did, "I coulda been a contender".

It is fear of missing the mark in life that leads so many to pack up the arrows and walk away. Others stay and keep shooting, keep aiming for that bullseye. Who leaves and who stays does not come down to who is good and who is bad, for as Solzhenitsyn said "the line separating good and evil [does not run between men] but passes right through every human heart".

Those who leave are sinners, those who stay are sinners. The only difference is that one acknowledges there is a target to be hit and the other is too afraid to do so. Jesus reminds us not to be afraid.

But "of what should we not be afraid?" Pope St. John Paul II asks in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994).