Peace is the antithesis of panic, but most
of us find the latter dominant when adversity comes calling.
Why, when trouble sends out her couriers, do we haste to RSVP in
person, dressed in our shroud? While it is true that you
know not what tomorrow will hold, it seems a bit impetuous to
mark all the squares on your doomsday calendar. Crises
will come like cold fronts over our lives, but they need not
move us to fatalism. Our FOUNDER admonishes:
"I have spoken unto
you, that in ME ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have
tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
Pray and keep your powder dry
sounds sensible, but it tends to the oxymoronic.
"And HE spake a parable
unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to
faint;" The saint who
refuses to faint, trades the powder for fleece, watching
peacefully from the ridge as GOD sets all who oppose to panic
instead (cf. Judges 6:36-40).
Whom we ultimately fear is who\WHO we will fall before, whether
it be self, Satan, or the SAVIOR.
"... fear not them which
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather
fear HIM which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
Call before you fall is the
moral here; and though Daniel was not privy to New Testament
teaching, he epitomized those words of CHRIST in his reaction to
Darius's foolish edict. He likewise predated the courage
of: "Peter and
the other apostles ..." having
chosen "to obey
GOD rather than men."
"Blotting out the
handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was
contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to HIS
cross;" There is a
positive panic to be derived out of a Writing, [i.e., the Ten
Commandments]; which have been broken by every one of us, in
spirit, if not in letter.
That port of panic, can though, if you are prayerfully
courageous, turn to a haven against the
"handwriting", for all who
kneel humbly before the AUTHOR of these
"ordinances".
"Then they cry unto the
LORD in their trouble, and HE bringeth them out of their
distresses. HE maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves
thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be
quiet; so HE bringeth them unto their desired haven."