Silly boy you got so much to live for

So much to aim for, so much to try for

You blow it all with, paranoia

You’re so insecure you, self-destroyer

paranoia, they destroy ya

(Here it goes again) paranoia, they destroy ya

The Kinks

It takes a mere ten seconds to make it through the day, that is all it requires. First, turn off the computer and the hysterical news stories via the television and social media (2 seconds). Next, close your eyes, take a deep breath (five seconds). That leaves three seconds to open your eyes and realize you are alive and God is with you.

Here is what Psalm 112:7-8a says, “The person who fears God is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid.”

The word “steady” in verse 8 is interesting. It means to be at complete rest knowing that someone much more capable and wise than you has your best interests at hand. God is your father, he is watching over you, and he is way ahead of you planning for future contingencies and mitigating casualties. In Philip Yancey’s book, “Disappointment With God”, Mr. Yancey writes, 

“There are people who are never satisfied with a non-answer, (from God when he doesn’t seem to answer prayer), for those who cannot stop asking questions I offer two answers of pure speculation: (1) Perhaps God keeps us ignorant because enlightenment may not help us. (2) Perhaps God keeps us ignorant because we are incapable of comprehending the answer.

His point is that “God ‘lives’ on a higher level, in another dimension. “The universe does not contain him; he created the universe…He can step into the material world – if he did not, in fact, our senses would never perceive him – but it is for him a ‘stepping into,’ like an author who introduces himself as a character in his own play, like a person in the real world who makes a brief appearance in a movie.”

God is outside of time, we are stuck in it. And when you are stuck in the mud of everyday living you can’t see the green grass that is lying just before you. But God can, and he asks us to just take one step at a time to get out of the mud. You will make it, stay calm, trust him.

T. S. Eliot wrote, “To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here on will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now.”

Is God the greatest reality for you? Or is material comfort and safety? That may be the hardest question to answer today. It is like God uses difficulties to wean us off of cheap substitutes and place us completely in his care.

The person who fears God fears nothing. That is where the calm resides. 

Augustine once prayed a prayer thousands of years ago that is still true today, “How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose!…You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place…O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.”

Getting to this point takes a mere ten seconds. Just try it, take a little deep breath, stay calm, it will do you some good today.