If anyone says their life is perfect and they have no troubles, they are either lying to you or lying to themselves. Problems are part of life.

Billy Graham once said,

“Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.”

We Need Turbulence

Adversity, or the turbulence of life, can lead us to better things. We struggle to be born like a butterfly struggles from a cocoon. We fight to grow up and emerge independent (we hope) from our home.

We see the benefits of turbulence in nature as well. There’s a display in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum that fascinates me. It demonstrates the problem that Charles Lindberg had on one leg of his attempted worldwide flight. He had seas that were too calm with no wind and he couldn’t take off.

Peter Marshall, the former chaplain of the US Senate, said,

“When we long for life without difficulty, remind us that oaks grow strong under contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”

Personally, I don’t like problems. Yet, I can say that the darkest, hardest problems of life have helped me become better. The lonely paths are often the most fruitful in the end. Although I hate them while I’m in them.

I’d love to give you great wisdom and a 1,2,3 formula for knocking out problems but I really have nothing to say but Romans 12:12,

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

That is really the only approach that I have except this “warriors creed” that I came across once,

“I will lay me down to bleed a while and then rise to fight again.”

Sometimes, when we’re wounded and we’re fighting problems, we must sit still for a moment to process. We won’t stay down. We won’t be out. But to sit still in the midst of tough problems sometimes is the wisest thing we can do. Then, we can arise ready to let the wind of the turbulence help us take off and fly.

How many wish to fly but reject the wind that would make it possible?