Eric Milner-White

The great enemy of faith isn’t doubt. Jesus recognized a place for honest doubt in his ministry (Mark 9.24). The most formidable rival to faith is fear.  Faith and fear often stand in direct opposition to each other in Scripture.  Jesus’ admonition, “Do not fear” was a persistent theme in his teaching.  Fear is what undermines faith. Courage in the Bible is not the absence of fear; it is faith in the midst of fear. I recall a line (often misattributed) from Karle Baker’s 1921 poem, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
Eric Milner-White (1884-1963) was an army chaplain who supported British troops during World War I. Eric was an Anglican priest who had deep affection for the Book of Common Prayer, yet he soon discovered many of its time-honored prayers failed to connect with soldiers in the field. Such prayers seemed overly formal to troops in the trenches who daily faced the chilling prospect of injury or death. Eric began to write prayers of his own to share with frightened soldiers. These prayers were later compiled into book form with the appropriate title Daily Prayer. Today’s prayer is often called “The Prayer of Good Courage.”  While it was written primarily for soldiers, it is relevant to our anxiety-producing circumstances also: