How to View a Crisis

There are a lot of reasons why I am glad that I was not born in China. Among those reasons would be that, according to what I’ve read, the Chinese language has about 50,000 characters or ideographs. I have enough trouble with our twenty-six letters!

I have read also that the character for crisis is really a combination of two other ideographs. The Chinese put the character for danger and the one for opportunities together to form the word crisis.

I think that is an interesting way to view a crisis. Sometimes all we seem to be able to see is the danger in a crisis. Maybe we need to also look for the opportunities that crises present to us. 

A couple of those opportunities come to my mind readily. There are many, many more than two, but for our space here we will mention only two.

First, if we will practice that way of looking at things, we will have a positive impact on others. We may, in fact, “preach” a better sermon by our actions during a crisis than any actual sermon delivered by a talented and knowledgeable preacher.

Second (and probably most importantly for us), a crisis gives us to learn by experience our dependence upon the Lord. We will be much better people for having done so.

I am thinking of one person about whom we read in the Old Testament. It is obvious that Joseph faced a great number of crises in his life. Hopefully, as I look back on the ones in my life, I can say what he said to his brothers:

…you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good… (Gen. 50:20, NASV)

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