Opened Up The Bible To:
Genesis 3:1-13 (Amplified Version)

On Fear:
Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton takes place in a world where emotions are in human form and there’s one girl, Elizabeth, who can see them. She’s also the one girl who can’t feel them. Fear is intrigued by this and never stops hounding her until he finds out why.

Genesis 3 tells the story of Adam and Eve who ate from the one tree that God told them not to eat from when after this instruction, a serpent told Eve it was indeed, okay to eat from that forbidden tree.

It’s not that difficult to envision Fear as a main character in Some Quiet Place (which I will refer to as SQP below) because Fear is a main character in our lives. Also, in Genesis 3, Satan is fear in the form of a serpent.

I love that Genesis 3:1 says, Now the serpent was more subtle and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made and one of the first lines in SQP is He comes swiftly.

Fear is often subtle, crafty, and swift.

The next part of verse 1 says, And he [Satan] said to the woman, Can it really be that God has said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden? while the second paragraph of SQP reads: I know his only purpose for making the journey to Wisconsin is to taunt me again. Test my boundaries. See if he can break through the unbreakable barrier. Fear goes on to say, I won’t rest until I’ve tasted your terror, Elizabeth. Elizabeth even calls Fear an illusion a couple of pages ahead.

“Can it really be?” Does God really know what He’s talking about? This is how Fear does it. He plants a seed of doubt. An illusion. This is why Fear does it. To taunt and test and break us down.

Genesis 3:4-13 explores what fear does to us. What we do when we let fear take control. The Chronological Life Application Study Bible (NLT Version) breaks it down wonderfully. Fear undermines God. Fear accepts the lie of the serpent instead of trusting God. Fear avoids responsibility and acts impulsively. Fear reaches out to others. Fear hides from God. Fear makes excuses and blames others. This reminds of this passage in SQP:

I don’t have the luxury of the people around me. I can’t weep. I can’t lust, I can’t cower in terror, I can’t celebrate/ Not in a true sense; I’ve grown talented at the art of pretending.

Elizabeth has to pretend that she has emotions. Meanwhile, we pretend that we don’t have emotions while so blatantly playing out oh so many. Guilt being one of them, as we see when a classmate approaches Elizabeth but quickly changes the subject when they’re talking to avoid…the truth.

Fear avoids the truth. Which I find to be such a fascinating parallel since Fear in SQP does everything he can to get to the bottom of it.

In Genesis 3:7-8, Adam and Eve realize they are naked and immediately hide behind fig leaves. That says a lot. One line in SQP that I find particularly striking is when Elizabeth says about another classmate, I know a side of her she so desperately tries to hide. It’s exactly what fear says about us, exactly what Fear is trying to find out about Elizabeth. Not even close to the whole truth that God knows. He knows every side of the truth and still, Jesus died for us. He died for us so we don’t have to hide. He gave us grace but even before grace – I’m going to say that again – even before grace God said (in verse 11) to Adam and Eve after finding the two hiding behind silly fig leaves, “Who said you weren’t fine as you were? Who told you that my promises for you weren’t enough?” Are you listening to God or the serpent?

Like Adam and Eve, we hide and avoid by putting on fig leaves, putting up barriers because we have areas that we don’t want God to know about. He knows. Toss aside that fig leaf and walk past Fear. Don’t let Fear get too attached. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

I love when Fear asks Elizabeth, “Don’t you want to know the truth?” and she answers without hesitation, “No.” So telling. You can’t spell TRUTH without HURT but you have to be willing to do the work, take out what you don’t need and add what you do need before you can see how WORTH it it is to walk past Fear. Grace and so much more are available to you. It’s up to you to take it. Use it. Live in it.

Four chapters into SQP, we meet Courage. One of my favorite lines of this book is, I don’t know how I recognize him, but I do. In SQP, Courage is Fear’s brother. Courage says to Elizabeth about Fear, I’m everything he isn’t. Elizabeth says to Courage about Fear, He hates what he can’t understand. So telling! It makes me see not only Fear as the serpent but Courage as the tree of life. Or at least one of the branches. Because I know what I really see as the tree of life but I don’t want to go into SQP spoilers. 🙂 I’ve discussed the first fifty pages of Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton thus far. If you’re intrigued by what you’ve read of SQP here, be sure to buy the book. There’s more goodness where this came from.

Again, I ask you…are you listening to God or the serpent?

Courage or Fear?

A Fallen Branch:

I’ve decided to call this section of the post, A Fallen Branch to indicate the disconnect between what’s been written above and what I’m experimenting with below. My experiments may change from week to week. This week, it’s a writing prompt. I’ve snapped this branch off and let it fall for you to pick up and play with. This means that the words that come after this will not come from the same person – not from the author but from YOU. Here we go!

In Some Quiet Place, Elizabeth’s friend, Maggie lets people think that she’s an addict because she doesn’t want to be pitied if they were to find out the alternative…the truth. Shaking things up a bit, let’s place Fear in an actual rehabilitation center. Imagine Fear is an addict.

I’ve plucked this exchange from SQP to work in this writing prompt.
“Hate,” I continue, “Surprise, Disappointment…they’ve all stopped coming.”

“They don’t have my stamina,” Fear says with a smirk.

If Hate, Surprise, and Disappointment aren’t sitting around the circle at the weekly support group meeting that Fear is sitting in right now, who is sitting beside him? And who is Fear replying to in the circle when he says, “They don’t have my stamina?” Finish this conversation using the following line as the first line:

“Hi, my name is Fear and I’m an addict.”