Joshua 1:9 – “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” |
There are times I run across terms in reading which are foreign to many people but known to me.
As I surveyed some reading, an article caught my attention. It was about the current anxiety.
The writer went on to give a long-winded description of the term as he believed it fit with an anxiety-ridden 2020.
Here is the word. See if you know it. Zozobra.
I knew it because I learned it as a child.
My family grew up in Santa Fe, NM in the pre-Hollywood pollution of that town. It was a relatively small town nestled at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
Each year, around Labor Day, the town, whose heritage was a concoction of Spanish tradition, Roman Catholicism, and Native American fokelore provided an interesting ceremony. The burning of Zozobra.
Zozobra was a 100 foot tall paper mache monster assembled by the Kiwanas club. Since my dad belonged, I could tag along as they built this monstrosity.
On Saturday night was the event. Everyone went to the stadium, usually parking on the hills that surrounded and watched the spectacle. An Indian medicine man did a manic dance at the base and at the appropriate time touched a torch too the base and Zozobra burned. It was something to see.
The legend is that the burning of the monster was the setting fire to fears and bad luck so the next year would be worry-free.
Even as a boy I thought that fanciful but the show was entertaining.
There are people who are fighting their own zozobras, a sense of fear of what is happening and what will happen. But some kind of pagan ritual doesn’t get you through the fear. It takes something more substantial.
When Joshua inherited an untrained people whose history was more disobedient than obedient, God gave him the charge to do what had been dreamed of since Abraham stared at the stars of the heavens. He would get God’s people to the promised land. But, from the hints in Joshua 1, he must have trembled a little.
So God told him about fear. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”” (Joshua 1:9, NIV)
For Joshua, the antidote to fear was to remember the Lord was with him wherever he would go.
That beats a large paper monster any day.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com