Devotion 3.25.20

During the leadership seminars John Maxwell has been holding, he came to the point to define what a crisis is.  He used a definition I was familiar with, based on the Greek definition of a crisis.  The Greeks would say a crisis is a "turning point."

A crisis forces you to do things you wouldn't do without the crisis.  It forces change.  A crisis increases our focus and limits what had been competing or conflicting priorities.  As Maxwell noted, "A crisis disrupts and distracts us.  It ultimately is a time of difficulty requiring a decision that will be a turning point."

I think back to my own life.  My dad had a full-time job until the "packing plant" (a reference to a meat production and packaging plant) shut down.  That certainly disrupted things and priorities changed.  I was very young. The focus was making a limited amount of money stretch to provide food and clothing and pay the bills. Dad drew part-time jobs while looking for full-time work.  The decisions were made and each one was a turning point in survival.  He finally drew enough credits from part-time work with the Post Office to add to his naval service in World War II to apply for and get accepted to the USDA Food Inspection program.  That became his career until he retired when I was active in my career as an educator.

It was clearly a time of difficulty requiring decisions that eventually provided turning points.  Each of us have our own turning points in our lives.  As Maxwell notes in discussing turning adversity into advantage, the person who takes a crisis and makes it an advantage does so from perspective.  We know there is a pattern of good and bad in our lives.  How do we use both to grow (perspective)?  One thing Maxwell notes is, "There is always an answer."

As Christians, we should know that to change our perspective is a matter of to whom shall we go?  Psalm 121 says, "I lift up my eyes to the mountains - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth." (v 1 - 2) The psalmist goes on to detail how intimate God is with us by consistently saying "watches over us."  In the Gospel of John, Peter answers, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."  (6:68)

We pray we turn to God in the good and the bad times.  We pray that God watch over us, to not let us stumble and to keep us safe from all harm.  We pray that God's will be done and that in time of need, we learn what that will is in our lives.  We turn to Christ, who has the words of eternal life, to gain that perspective needed to make the decisions in our lives that will be that turning point.