Practice being calm...

Every weekend, I have the opportunity to hear a word of encouragement that I believe will get me started on the right track. Yet each week, it never fails, something comes up that attempts to shake all the enthusiasm out of me, as if I were being held up by my ankles, and shaken until all my precious belongings fell from my pockets onto the ground. Maybe we aren't hanging by our angles, but many times, we allow life's challenges to shake us nonetheless, and there we are with our confidence, our joy, our self-control emptied all over the ground. Even though we know that worrying about any situation brings no relief, we still employ that emotion as our first response. What if over time you would begin to employ a different first response.


Jonah Lehrer, a writer for the LA Times, discussed the calm nature of pilots. "This is where flight simulators enter the picture. The advantage of these realistic simulators, which have been in widespread use since the early 1980s, is that they allow pilots to practice extreme flight scenarios... The training provides pilots with important technical skills -- they can practice flying crippled planes -- but it also teaches them something more important: ... They learn how to ignore their fear when fear isn't useful and how to make quick, complicated decisions in the most fraught situations. Flight crews don't panic because they've practiced staying calm."

For people of faith, the question should be flashing in the back of your mind like a neon sign...HAVE I PRACTICED BEING CALM? Well, I was reflecting on a favorite passage of mine, the 23 Psalms, and in it reads this verse, "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures," As our pastor ministered on yesterday, Have we practiced lying down in the green pastures our heavenly father has provided for us, or are we still struggling in our own strength? We want to fix things, and in our fragile state, we do not have the power to fix all that ails us. We must trust that our heavenly father is still in control, no matter what it looks like. Our initial response is usually to frantically grab the wheel of life when we appear to be careening out of control, but our heavenly father wants us to mature to the point when all can follow Matthew 6:25 and say, "...take no thought for your life." In short, it doesn't mean not to prepare, only that we should practice being calm.