Proper Posture

It’s amazing how much having the wrong posture can create problems.

Headaches, muscles spasms, improper balance can all be caused by a lack of good posture. Despite this awareness, bad posture isn’t uncommon. Long past are the days when children balanced books on their head in order to ensure that they were walking the proper way.

Our posture isn’t just indicative of future health problems; it’s symbolic of the way that we approach life. Too often, when faced with difficult situations we’re tempted to lower our head, slump our shoulders, and simply shuffle through the challenge that we’ve met.

The problem with this is that when we’ve done that for one circumstance, we’re tempted to do it for another. Our improper stance becomes accepted over time, until it becomes our first response when reality doesn’t align with our plans. It can get to the point where we don’t even knowing what standing up straight feels like any more; our outlooks and our posture are ones of defeat.

The Christian, however, needs to make sure that they walk upright through the circumstances that God has given us. After all, we know that the things that come across our paths did not arrive there without our Father’s knowledge. We can have confidence in the midst of the confusion, we can have clarity in the midst of chaos; not because we know what will happen, but because we know the One that does. Life may not be easy, but we know the One with whom our future is secured.

To use a baseball analogy, it can be hard to approach the plate with confidence when all we expect is for life to throw us curveballs. However, as any baseball player knows, confidence is exactly what you need when you step inside the batter’s box. If you go in there expected to be defeated, you most likely will. And while both the baseball player and the child of God need to know the proper stance, only the child of God has the confidence that victory has already been secured.

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Water in the Valleys

A few years ago, I heard a series of messages on Psalm 23. In discussing the “valleys of the shadows and death,” one speaker made the excellent point that sometimes the sheep needed to go into the valleys to get water. This seemed like a logical observation but one that I had never considered before. Water is not found on the mountain tops, but in the places in between. We may think of valleys as detours, inconveniences on the way to our true destination, yet they often contain something good. . The fact that the valley may contain something beneficial is usually not something that we consider. In fact, we are often tempted to avoid walking down that path, if we can.

However, water, doesn’t just nourish the sheep it also strengthens them and prepares them for the journey ahead. If the sheep don’t go into the valley to quench their thirst, they may not last the rest of the way.  In other words, the benefit to the sheep isn’t just in the moment. It brings them good then, yes, but it also prepares them for the future.

Sometimes, we’re called to walk in valleys too. Those valleys may be watered with the tears of anguish and of pain or they may simply be “detours” on the path that the Shepherd is leading us. Sometimes we see the good that God is bringing in the moment, and sometimes, we might not. Regardless, we can trust that for His children He is using the times in the valley to bring about their good and His glory. Not only for the moment, but for their future as well.

Often times sheep have to go in the valleys in order to be prepared for what lies ahead. Sometimes they may wonder why when the path ahead of them seems certain and clear. In those cases, they must trust the Shepherd and follow where He leads. They must drink of His goodness and remember that not only has He prepared the path, He knows what they need to get safely to the end.

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