I read a profound statement this week, and honestly, I can’t get the few words out of my mind. They’re words from one of my favourite teachers, Jesus, and He said this [paraphrased by Eugene Peterson], "Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t You?" [John 14v1]
As I had this sincere revelation of what Jesus was really saying, I remembered the context that Jesus was speaking to His disciples in. It was the night of his betrayal, the moments before he was going to be handed over to authorities. He knew that something His disciples had never seen happen, was about to happen. Yes, He had told them about His resurrection, but would you believe it, if you hadn’t seen it? So much uncertainty, so much ambiguity running through their minds.
And Jesus says these compassionate words to encourage them; "don’t let this throw you." Our current circumstances can definitely throw us, it can send our emotions spiralling, our priorities rearranging, our routines unravelling altogether; resulting in feeling so overwhelmed.
I think the best analogy for being thrown is on a rollercoaster, I personally do not like roller coasters at all. I had a really bad experience when I was 4 years old, and I can confidently say that for 23 years I have not gone on another roller coaster [a pretty miraculous achievement]. But I still think this analogy is relatable. Feeling overwhelmed can feel very much like being on a roller coaster, sometimes the experience is short, like a simple 5 second straight drop. Or maybe it’s a bit longer, like a looped rollercoaster that lasts at least 30 seconds.
Either way, it’s not only the movement of the rollercoaster that is frightening, it’s often the fear of being thrown that scares us; literally being thrown off the ride, or having absolutely no control. Once we're on the ride, we’re there to stay. Even though we willingly chose to go on the rollercoaster. We knew what you were in for [we may not have chosen our current circumstances, but we did know that it was a possibility, we may have had a glimpse as to what we were in for].
We had some time to psych ourselves up [even on the smallest rides, it requires psyching myself up, or out, depends how I’m feeling that day]. And eventually the ride starts… slowly at first, until… it’s all out of our control, and we are trusting in the rollercoaster to keep us alive. Trusting that the structural engineers have constructed the ride so that our lives would be protected, so that we would still live to tell the tale. Trusting that there will be no technical difficulties that may cause any trouble.
Side note, I once went on a ferris wheel, a really big one, and I don’t like heights [probably a factor in my rollercoaster fear], but we got stuck at the top of the ferris wheel, not stopped to marvel in the view… stuck… we couldn’t go anywhere for a few minutes while they sorted out the issue [sounds like a romantic-moment ready to happen, but it was not romantic at all, to say the least].
And by some miracle [I don’t mean to put the fear of life in you when you choose to ride a rollercoaster - they are very safe], our trust in a man built structure, and technology has kept us safe. Your fear didn’t overwhelm you, your risk-gauge didn’t stop you, and your mind didn’t out-think you.
Now, what if we relate this to how we’re feeling right now. We’re on a rollercoaster, we may have had a little less time to psych ourselves up for what we were getting ourselves into [probably more like a dark tunnel rollercoaster], but we’re here now. We’re on the ride, we just need to embrace it. We can either choose to let fear overwhelm us, but we’re stuck - there’s no getting off this ride. We shouldn’t let our risk-gauge stop us from doing life differently, the twenty-first century is designed for online living, let’s embrace it. And we definitely shouldn’t let our mind out-think us. That’s when we need to choose who we’re going to put our trust in.
God has a 100% success rate when we choose to trust Him. If we can put all our trust in a rollercoaster, a man-made construction; surely we can emphatically trust that God will not let us down. Our hearts do not need to be troubled, we don’t need to be thrown by any circumstance that we face.
Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t You?
JCS
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