Steady, Now – March 31, 2022 (90/365)

Let me go ahead and fast track this – I want to wake up early tomorrow and shoot. Yes, will you look at that – all of a sudden I want to shoot again. Well, it’s probably because it’s matching what I have posted on my Instagram account, and I have a catchy caption for it too – ‘Fools’ Sunrise’.

I’m thinking to myself, I should probably share what I think I know about April Fools’ Day as part of my message this coming Sunday. As far as I know it was either us Christians doing the persecuting, or we were the ones being ridiculed – either way, one group was being called ‘April Fools’, and as to who it really is, and why, well, I’m not sure if I could find the Simpsons episode that explains it. Ah, well, I’ll look it up on YouTube.

Good old YouTube. There’s always something there to entertain me, or something there for my entertainment, which I fool myself by calling ‘education’.

Most of the time videos I term with the latter are on cryptocurrencies and solar energy – well, these days, at least. What’s sort of bothering me is that I’ve also been looking at videos from the likes of Disturbing Reality and Lazy Masquerade, on descriptions of execution style videos (mostly from the former) and unsolved mysteries and rabbit holes. I usually catch myself watching these in the interim before I search for Nate Bower Fitness videos for me to follow along to train with the heavy bag.

Speaking of boxing, it’s up there with another non-negotiable, the couple of things I seem to have to do every day without question – that is, writing. I clarify my body with boxing and burpees, and I clarify my mind with typing, and typing until exhaustion or clarity, or both. Writing seems to keep working, and it keeps me grounded and focused, even if I have a bad day without self-control, and I have one or two cheap dopamine shots.

It’s working right now. I’m just running these words right out of my head, allowing the brain to just flow, letting every thought out, forcing what I have to expunge out of my mind just so that I have a lot to work with and to breathe in the space between my ears – it may sound literally stupid, but we definitely need to enforce silence and blankness in our minds every now and then… I mean, sooner or later, thoughts will pop up or fly in from anywhere, and if we realize that we are more than what we think, it’ll be a whole lot easier for us to control one… then a billion thoughts that may come our way. We need to know how capable we are in allowing thoughts to go in and out of our minds without us having to act on each and every one of them – the thing is, any thought that passes by, is soaked in, is stored but archived, and/or is acted on right away immediately has some sort of effect on the rest of our being, whether we like it or not.

It’s one thing to control the flow of what makes its way into our heads, but if we’re honest, any attempt for us to establish some sort of significant control would have us exhausted without any progress. No, you don’t control the flow, you recognize it from a stance, a mindset of confidence which is secure in the fact that, again, God made us to be a whole lot more than the thoughts that come in.

For the Christian, it is very important for us, not to control the flow of the thoughts, but to continue reminding ourselves of who Christ is, and who we are in Christ. Identity is what allows us to face anything and everything that comes from within, or from the outside; and, again, it’s not just who WE are, but who Christ is as well – Right now, I’m reminded that Christ is Hope – He is the Hope of Glory, meaning we have hope and we look forward to later times, to the end of time and beyond, because Christ Himself is the glory over all creation (at least, that’s a perspective of how to see Christ as the believer’s Hope of Glory – there are certainly other ways to see it). But the thing is, more than acknowledging Christ as our Hope of Glory, He too is the Hope that serves as an Anchor for our souls.

Now for the longest time I thought that Christ as an Anchor meant that He keeps us steady – and this is true, but we usually latch on how He keeps us steady whenever the winds and waves slam against us. But today I’m led to think outside of what it means for a seafarer, but perhaps for anyone in, say, a river, and in a seemingly endless river of thoughts flowing from all sorts of sources – outside garbage and inner unresolved issues, for example. Of course, I say ‘seemingly’ endless, especially today, considering all the advancements in technology that would have even children literally disabled, weighed down by all the images, videos, and text – as if what we had before the internet was bad enough. I’m not lamenting all this – besides, it’s what is expected, especially during these times, and also, to lament sort of means that we’re trying to control the flow.

Christ is our Anchor in the sea of unexpected circumstances, that would hit aspects of our being, seen and unseen, in the forms of gusts of wind that would throw us off course, or waves that would downright sink us… But during these times let us also remember that Christ is our Anchor – and I don’t know, if we’re going to stay with the ocean, I’ll say that instead of an outright river Christ is an Anchor against the underwater currents full of distractions and videos and narratives and agendas being pushed into our brains – also effective, but far more subtle is throwing us off course AND possibly sinking us at the same time.

Without an anchor we are at the mercy of the sea that would have us distracted and fighting in vain for any peace or sanity, leading us to despair, leaving us with no choice but to resign to the darkness that would swallow us up at a moments’ notice, with no intention to believe in anyone who says that there is a God who can help us. Without an anchor we are hopeless, and hopeless fools, at that.

I suppose tomorrow’s sunrise would serve as a reminder for us all – without Light, or the One who spoke forth light, we would have no Anchor. We would be at the mercy of the depths.

Thank God for Life. Thank God for the Light of Men. Thank God, indeed, for Christ, who is our Anchor.

God bless us all. Let’s have a good weekend.