Add Air Or Put On The Spare! (08.24.05--Under ...  PRO

Add Air or Put on the Spare! (08.24.05--Under Pressure!--Exodus 16:2)

When we are under pressure, we can either seek to manage the pressure or let the pressure manage us. Easier said than done? Yes, but like most things in life, there is a way if we really have our eyes and hearts open to finding it.

The other day I had a flat tire on the Corvair. It was one of those slow flats that you look at every day as you get into the car in the morning and say, “I think that it is a little low. I’ve got to put some air in that tire soon.” After weeks of looking and not doing, I pulled out of the garage one morning and, after a few miles on the road, I began to feel the car handling poorly. There was a sway and unsteadiness about it. I knew that it could only be one thing--the tire that was going flat, not having convinced me of its plight in the garage, it was now speaking to me on the highway. It was time to either add air or put on the spare.

I could have avoided the inconvenience of changing a tire if I had simply reached for the air compressor days ago and filled that tire to pressure. Not having done so, I was left with the lesser of the two choices, changing a dirty tire on a busy highway. Instead of handling the pressure, it had handled me.

“There are two ways of handling pressure.” According to Jay Kesler. “One is illustrated by a bathysphere. Bathyspheres compensate (for pressure) with plate steel several inches thick, which keeps the water out but also makes them heavy and hard to maneuver. (When) you look through the tiny, thick plate-glass windows, however, what do you see? Fish! These fish cope with extreme pressure in an entirely different way. They don’t build thick skins; they remain supple and free. They compensate for the outside pressure through equal and opposite pressure inside themselves.

“Christians, likewise, don’t have to be hard and thick-skinned--as long as they appropriate God’s power...