Refusing Fear

Have you turned on the news yet this morning? If so, you know there is a new panic sweeping the world: Swine Flu! That and salmonella from eating raw alfalfa sprouts (although I'm not sure why anyone would eat raw alfalfa sprouts to begin with.) But the big concern, the one that has governments issuing travel advisaries and warnings of epidemics and pandemics, is swine flu.

I'm not quite sure quite how we ought to react to the dire warnings I'm hearing this morning. After all, these are the same people who were absolutely certain a few years ago that bird flu was about to ravage the world's population. And do you remember the Y2K panic, and all of the other public scares that have failed to materialize?
It seems to me that we have numerous governmental and other various public agencies and organizations, including the media, who work to keep the public in a state of fear, or at least elevated concern about something all the time. Maybe it's all about headlines, or public funding, or ratings. I don't know.
But I'm making a choice this morning. I'm choosing not to participate in the "Great Swine Flu Panic of 2009". I'm choosing the promise of God that has stood the test of time longer than any of these public fear frenzies.

You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the arrow that flies by day;
Or of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.

A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not approach you.
~ Psalm 91:5-7