Why is God fearing a good thing?

[Michael]

Elskidor, there's a lovely bit in the Wind In The Willows (definitely a book worth re-reading as an adult if you haven't so done) where rat and mole are going to see the god, Pan. Kenneth Grahame beautifully captures the mix of awe, trust, love and fear of which the biblical authors write. A problem is, perhaps, that we don't really have an English word to capture this response that we have to such a sense of numinous, the sense of something so much greater than us that it is awesome, fearsome, comforting, peaceful, and disturbing all at the same time...

'Rat!' he [mole] found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'

'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of Him [Pan]? O, never, never! And yet— and yet— O, Mole, I am afraid!'

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.