Not jumping at shadows

Loved - forever! part the first
I suppose it was my own fault; I really shouldn’t have been watching a grisly episode of Criminal Minds so close to bed-time. Not that I dreamed about the strange-but-effective team of individuals, or the seriously-distorted pieces of humanity they were trying to catch and apprehend. But something nasty from that show crept into my sleeping consciousness and produced a very unpleasant and unsettling nightmare - of sorts. So I woke up, rattled and unnerved and needing a “little walk down the passage”.
That’s when the trouble started. I was in the halfway world between dream and reality when I entered the darkened hallway, and nearly leapt clean out of my skin when I “saw” something lurking next to the mirror near the kitchen!!! Whoa! After a severe attack of knee-trembling, and deep-breathing, I snapped on the light to find it was a pile of instruments that had been brought in and deposited just there. The light removed the spectre of my fevered imagination, and revealed not just the reality of the situation in the hallway, but also my silly suggestible fear for what it was - a jumping at shadows.
In our Christian lives we do quite a lot of jumping at shadows - which pleases the enemy no end - and yet we should know better. God will not allow that kind of thing invade our space, or terrify us. God is about light and love and intends such good for us that it is almost beyond our understanding; and when we habitually hang around in His presence, in prayer, worship, thoughtful reflection and study (and in the loving embrace of fellowship) we find His wisdom and compassion often enlightening our world of shadowy fears and looming apparitions and reminding us that love conquers all and His light shows the wonder of His enduring Presence.