Over the years one of our occasional summer enjoyments is to buy some take-out food and take it with us for a little picnic at New Denmark Park in Albert Lea. Recently we did so on a Sunday afternoon, enjoying the breeze off the lake and watching the fountains, the boaters and skiers, doing some reading and even taking a short nap in the lawn chairs we brought along. As we eat, the ducks usually gather around expecting some morsels of bread, etc.

A couple of times when we have had our picnics there, we have had our two grandsons along and they get really fascinated by the ducks coming around and so they feed them some pieces of bread from their left-over sandwiches. Then they would tire of feeding them, but the ducks were still following after them. And so they would ask us, “How do we get them to go away?”

We would say, “Just don’t feed them anymore, and they will just wander away to find food in another place.”

In John’s first letter, chapter four, he writes: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. …There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.”

By the end of September we will be in retirement and settled in the house we have recently purchased in St. Peter. Living there puts us closer to family and to those grandsons I mentioned. There have been some fears and anxieties in this process of getting ready for retirement and probably some more as we enter into this new phase of our lives. Some of that anxiety has had to do with purchasing a house to live in, and then our anxieties in how we will get the house ready to move into towards the end of September — painting, fixing, placing furniture (where will we put all our stuff?), etc. And then we, along with members of the parish, have anxieties about getting people to take over our various jobs in the parish, and will it all go smoothly?

We all have our days when various forms of fear and anxiety just crowd around us and just seem to take away all our thoughts and energy. It can all be quite overwhelming at times. It is then that we need to heed the wisdom given to our grandsons, “Just don’t feed them anymore.” Just don’t feed those fears and anxieties. Do as the Psalmist (34) suggests: “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” We turn them over to God, to that higher power, and we might even pray the famous Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

And then we put up that sign that says, “Don’t Feed the Fears!”

Yes, abide in God’s love; trust God’s love and care, for in that perfect and divine love there is no fear, but only peace and assurance and a much calmer present and future.