Sabbath Devotional :: Protection in Christ

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Lately it feels like everything in my life is on fire. Simultaneously. Not a small brush fire here or there that needs a bit of quick attention and management, but frightening conflagrations that threaten to consume and destroy. There is a lot of fight and flight and not enough peace and quiet. And for me it means that feeling tired and unsettled is the default.

In my more objective moments, I realize that some of this is just a feature of my personal phase of life, but there is also something else at play. So many others seem to feel the same, as if we are all being pushed to the edge of a bucking and tilting platform and cannot find a solid center from which to act. The political, social, environmental and religious norms that we once took for granted are less sure. This commonality makes it feel worse, because if our people also feel untethered, we cannot even temporarily tether each other!

All this makes me think about the illusion of control. It is human nature to seek to control our external environment and to protect ourselves from risk; it’s why humans invented everything from hats to agriculture, and it is why I’m personally very fond of the food in my basement and the money in my bank. But the control I try to build into my life truly is illusory. In a different world, maybe a world only a decade past, bringing myself into sync with all sorts of temporal best practices would have allowed me to maintain the fiction that I could keep the storms at bay and create a good life on my own terms. But for whatever reason it isn’t working now, and that has been a source of real discomfort to me.

Oddly, of late I feel deep gratitude for that disruption, because I’m starting to think that this process that I have found to be so terrifying, might in the end be the means for my own salvation. There is apparently no other peace for me, but the peace that is to be found in Christ.

“And now my [daughters,] remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if [wo]men build they cannot fall.”

The gulf of misery and endless woe. For years I have read that to mean a post-mortal place. But right now it feels like an alarmingly accurate description of my headspace. The world can quickly send me into the gulf of woe, and when I am there I worry, fret, sorrow, fear, empathize, rage and even despair. And frankly I’m tired of getting dragged. And there is only one way to stop it, I have to reset my foundation.

So, I have been turning to Christ. I have been more regular in my repentance and sincere in my discipleship. Focusing on the small and reasonable ways that I can lift the burdens of others pulls me outside of myself and helps me feel the immediate emotional lift that comes when I keep the covenants I made at baptism. Those are ways that I can act. I have also been more careful about how I allow myself to think, guarding diligently against angry or reflexive patterns of thought that take me to places of disempowerment. But most importantly I have tried to change the way I engage spiritually, turning actively to the Savior to relieve my own personal anxiety and fear. I take my worries to him without any expectation that he will take them away, and instead I ask for clarity of vision, a lightening of the burdens that must be carried and a powerful sense of his presence in my life.

And it turns out it is truly better than my dysfunctional mechanisms for control. My old tools may have protected my body, but they weren’t protecting my soul. Christ can do that and will. This protection is even more necessary when we desire to make a difference and to protect others from the whirlwind. Doing that work comes at a cost, but I am a witness to the protecting power that can shield us from the storm. Christ alone is the sure foundation. When we build upon Him, we cannot and will not fall.