Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is. See things from His perspective. Colossians 3:1-2 (MSG)
Have you ever felt seasick or suffered from mal de mer? In the days when I was out with my father on his fishing boat, we would sometimes hit choppy water around Garron Tower and the boat would pitch or roll. At a certain point the still waters suddenly morphed into mountains of angry waves. My face would adopt a pasty complexion and I truly felt like a miserable mariner. The advice given to me to avoid future seasickness was to focus on the horizon. “Don’t look at the waves around you. Look at the horizon far away. Look at that stable, stationary line and you will feel better. Use the horizon as a point to maintain your equilibrium.” Looking into the distance has long been touted as a way to stay upright and free of seasickness despite the pitch and roll of a boat. In a recently published article in a magazine called Psychological Science, experts found that staring at the horizon makes people steadier while at sea. “It’s the people who become wobbly who subsequently become motion sick,” said Thomas Stoffregen, a cognitive scientist at the University of Minnesota.
We all know that life has its fair share of ups and downs. Temporary turbulence in whatever form can be burdensome, depressing and overwhelming. In turbulent times at sea the worst thing you do is to lock yourself in your cabin and look down. Paul realised in Colossians 3 that too many of us have a tendency to shuffle along, eyes to the ground. It’s easy to get busy and absorbed with the things right in front of us and lose all sense of balance and equilibrium. We get self-absorbed in our problems. We worry too much. We stress too much. We focus on the wind-whipped waves.
To navigate turbulent times, we must stabilize ourselves by looking beyond the circumstances.
And set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things), not on the things that are on the earth. Colossians 3:2 (AMPC)
When life has got you down, look up. A sure safeguard to imped the irregular pitches of life is a continual setting of our mind upon the things above! Make this your point of reference.