The Urgency of the Emergency

An Essay on Who We Are, Where We Are, What’s Next?

We’ve been there. Something happens of an emergency nature, and suddenly the need to repair the breach or the problem causes us to act with a sense of urgency.

Emergencies bring out our urgent nature.

These emergencies do not have to be major events like we are facing today (COVID-19); rather, they can be quick needs rectified by quick fixes. Even if you have to drop 10 and punt! Pass the buck. Handoff to someone else.

Or take ownership of the moment and do what needs to be done. Even if it’s someone else’s job!

My daughter was pre-school age. She was rocking and playing on the chair in the living room. My bride was cooking. We were babysitting. Suddenly, Elizabeth threw herself backward, or slipped, or forgot where she was. Bam! Her head hits the end table and she’s running down the hall away from everyone screaming her head off! Brenda races over and picks her up… Blood! Everywhere! She jumps into the car, Elizabeth in her lap, a towel on the back of her head, and heads for the doctor’s office! Me? In a whirlwind, I’m left behind to handle the kids, dinner, and the fear of the unknown. What’s going on??!!!

What you do next when emergencies identifies whether you are any good in a crisis! I posed a thought recently that asked a simple question.

What is your priority?

It seems, and maybe because of the current emergency, we are more than ever ready to put God first. I’m not reading into this anything anyone says. Rather, it’s the sense of the moment.

Emergencies point us to our spiritual needs, and we consider what we may have skipped over in the past.

When you shut your house at night, do you ensure everything is locked tightly? My bride does. I’m not so sure I remember to go around and check every window or door. Perhaps it’s a gender thing? I’m not sure. But if someone were to slip in at night unaware, she plans on being ready to prevent it, whereas I, on the other hand, am ready to slam it to the ground, cuff the culprit, and kick ‘em into a cop car!

Regardless, the day’s emergency makes us think the door was left unlocked, and no one reacted strongly enough to kick the “boogie man” out of the house!

Perhaps we are more ready for spiritual focus than ever before. I hear reporters say this is the biggest event of their career, and they step up to the plate to tell the story.

Is this our biggest story? Perhaps. Somehow it’s become a global focus. We are treating it as the Zombie Apocalypse. Okay. I know this is a Hollywood reference, but in today’s world everyone seems to know about the Zombie story line!

We are analyzing what’s important enough to focus on. Jobs are lost. The shelves are emptied at the store. The virus is running amuck. Fear creeps in and hangs around our thinking process.

How are we going to get through this?

Tough Times Require Tough People

Tough people for tough times. Right? But not everyone is tough enough. This is always the truth. Some are too weak to ever toughen up enough. Either their body is racked with deficiencies, or their mind has too many weak spots to simply “buck up.”

One of the things I think is important?

Develop a tough mind (interior) to handle the rough and tumble world (exterior).
Perhaps it has something to do with what we feed our mind (interior)
to handle the world out there (exterior).

Have you heard the old saying? “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Or, Good In, Good out. Two opposite reviews of the same set of letters we used back in the ’70s. GIGO.

Let’s get tough enough to face the problem and make sure it doesn’t happen again, but in the midst of this, do not lose the goodness of your soul.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going!

We often equate mental toughness to being able to reject the weak and softness around us. Everything and everyone must toughen up or be lost.

Getting Through The Tough Times

During the current crisis, I’ve stayed away from all the negative media responses to the virus and their analysis of our response to the moment. Talking heads are continually painting a negative picture. I don’t need it. I don’t need them!

So. I’ve found myself reading two varieties of material. First and foremost, it’s my Bible. I do not have a reading plan. Rather, I pick it up, let it fall open, read what’s in front of me, and use that as my basis for research, thought, and prayer. Secondly, I’m rereading (or maybe even for the first time) some of the classics of a previous century’s literature. There’s something about the old way of looking at things that give me perspective on the modern world.

Currently, I just finished The Sea Wolf by Jack London.

It’s jammed-packed with the language of a bygone era with frequently researched words before I can understand the storyline. My Kindle app, connected to a dictionary, makes this a quick side trip. The ship’s captain’s nickname is Wolf, a dictator on his ship, ruling with a wicked controlling personality but full of an insatiable desire for knowledge. They pick up a drifter (nickname Hump) from a shipwreck, and eventually, the dialogue revolves around the two having a deep conversation on the foundation of mankind.

Tough Times Require A Tough Approach

It’s a deep conversation from two perspectives.

One, it seems, values life greatly (Hump), and the other thinks you value your own life more than you have to worry about anyone else’s life. Live. Die. It doesn’t matter. Even your own death will produce results you still learn from.

Wolf is ready to make your decision for you and cares little whether you survive or not. Physical examples are replete. From fighting, shooting, stabbing, and threatening others, you find that everyone has a desire to live (themselves) and care less about others surviving if the choice comes down to “me and you.”

This is not a typical classical work! It’s a deep insight into the psyche of humanity. It cannot be read nor understood by anyone who has never lived. It’s not theoretical. It’s in your face, a challenge to your foundation of how you should value life.

Are you tough enough to read it? I’m not sure. I’ll probably read it a second and third time to get a better feel for the foundation, but it’s something I never would pick up for a casual read.

Where Toughness Goes

The story leads through several months of open sea adventures, mutiny, and the growth of the weak (Hump) into a tough personality. His mental focus adapts to his new life, and the weak “city” body becomes toughened as he stands up to the hardships. He will never take on the mantra of Wolf. It’s not his nature. But when the need arises, his toughness saves the day. He stands up to Wolf at his own peril.

As I was reading this, I side-tracked down a rabbit trail and thought about the weak among us. Even the weakness I have in myself.

It’s not about character, physical strength, or even moral fiber. I was thinking about how we sometimes get caught by circumstances, and either we step up to the plate and survive, or we get washed away by the tidal flow of public reaction.

When you feel weakness slipping in, you force yourself to deal with it using a strongman’s mentality. You turn off the character trait that may be a soft interior/exterior, and you simply do what needs to be done. You may feel bad about the results, but you rationalize:

I did what had to be done.

I think back to things I did not enjoy doing, but it was something that had to be done. Thinking back, I realized I toughened my mind and words for the moment, took care of the need, and then regressed back to my jovial self. Still, every time toughness is required, your base personality changes. Morphs. Adjusts. You become different because you have to do something you probably did not enjoy.

Different Times

Joseph was the youngest brother, the son of Jacob, who was, himself, the younger of two siblings. There was something special about Joseph, but it also seemed he didn’t fit in with his older brothers’ personalities.

It seems they were toughened to the needs of the day. Perhaps a little too rowdy at times, but if you’ve been around a bunch of siblings (boys) growing up, you know they can sometimes be mean to each other! The pecking order normally happens in age order, but sometimes that younger one has to stir the nest and try out his own nature against those in line ahead of him.

The Sea Wolf deals with seal hunters. It brutally describes the role of the hunters, but it also describes how the young seal bulls are testing the older bulls for a place of dominance. Eventually, the older lose out to the younger. It’s an annual event to see who will lead the harem.

The brothers finally grow weary of Joseph. His dreams, visions, and favored status. He gets sold into slavery. His coat woven by his father is torn and bloodied, and Joseph slips out of his home turf headed to who knows where. (Genesis 37)

In the succeeding years, Joseph finds himself favored and then forgotten. On top, then on the bottom. Up, then down. You know, it’s almost as if he’s riding a roller coaster, whipped around tight curves, thrown over the edge of a steep hill, or fighting gravity both ways, up and down.

How can anyone survive a life like this?

Survival

The law of the jungle is the “Survival of the Fittest,” “anything goes,” or “every man for himself.” The theory comes from Rudyard Kipling’s book, The Jungle Book, and deals with the “legal” code seemingly used by wolves, who teach them to the next generation.

It’s almost as if we think that surviving is an answer to the natural call of our “wild side,” as Jack London’s book, The Call of the Wild may indicate. The main character of the story is a sled dog named Buck. He answers the call of his ancestral roots. When that seems appropriate, he reenters the wild side where his wolf brothers and sisters live.

For some, surviving may be a strong focus of rising to the top of the heap of others you tread on to ensure you survive alone. You fight hard, you win, though lonely.

How did Joseph survive? By realizing a larger plan for his life than what his brothers planned.

And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth,
and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
(Genesis 45:7 NKJV)

Notice? “God sent me…” It took a heavy weight off his shoulders! God is in control, and He knew this day would come! Imagine, it also takes a load of guilt off his brothers. His suffering was not wasted. There was a greater purpose.

For me, survival is not by becoming the toughest to survive the greatest threat that exists, rather, it’s more about becoming God-focused. How do we survive these tough times when it’s so easy for many to fail? We do it by lifting up one another to their highest potential and teaching them to do it to others.

Max Lucado describes Jesus as winning the toughest battle of his life. It was not won standing up to the arresting officers, the Pharisees, calling 10 thousand angels, or even confronting Pilate. His battle was won in the Garden of Gethsemane. In prayer, where peace reigns supreme. It was won when he prayed, “Not my will, thine Lord.”

Prepare Today for Tomorrow

What does the wise man say about this?

“Do not brag about tomorrow,
because you do not know what another day may bring.”  
Proverbs 27:1 (GW)

Tomorrow is a stranger. Today is all we have. So, prepare today for tomorrow. You have no clue about tomorrow, but that does not stop you from preparing for what you perceive about the future. Money and food are not everything, but knowing that the rain falls on the just and the unjust equally, and the sun rises on the evil and the good…

Well, that tells me I need to prepare for eventualities!

That’s one reason we have insurance! Even a credit score we protect! Savings accounts, extra food in the cupboard, and gasoline in the tank (even though we seldom drive these days!).

Jesus does teach about over-storing with a wealth mindset, you know, riches only for the accumulation of them. That rich man’s soul was required from him after he planned on tearing down his barns to build bigger barns to store his goods. (Luke 12:16-21) His warning? Be rich toward God… that’s the most important thing!

Focus

So. Keep my priorities correct, my focus forward, and my wits about me. Stay tough for tough times, but do not forget what it means to be sensitive to others. You are not in this alone! Following in your footsteps are many who need your example. Be that example!

Paul gives this very warning in his first recorded letter to Timothy.

“If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things,
thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ,
nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine,
whereunto thou hast attained.
But refuse profane and old wives’ fables,
and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.

For bodily exercise profiteth little:
but godliness is profitable unto all things,
having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.
For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach,
because we trust in the living God,
who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.
These things command and teach.

Let no man despise thy youth;
but be thou an example of the believers, in word,
in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy,
with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.

Meditate upon these things;
give thyself wholly to them;
that thy profiting may appear to all.
Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine;
continue in them:
for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself,
and them that hear thee.”  
1 Timothy 4:6-16 (KJV)

Prayerfully Submitted

I spent time thinking this through, praying about the subject and the words, and then penning them for others to read. Prayerfully, this is submitted in hope that you glean something from this that will help you face tough times as a tougher person.