Days seldom follow the schedules we\u2019ve made for them. There is always an interruption. Something breaks. The person you depended on doesn\u2019t perform. And there are those maddening moments of crisis that throw us off balance.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an old story of a cowboy who walked out of the saloon only to discover that someone had painted his horse\u2019s tail red. As onlookers roared with laughter, he was burning with rage. \u201cDoes anybody know who did this?\u201d he demanded to know.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw who done it!\u201d shouted somebody in the crowd. \u201cHe was wearin\u2019 a vest but no hat. And he went straight from here to the hardware store over there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tear him limb from limb!\u201d threatened the cowboy. And he stormed off in the direction of the store. He flung open the door and shouted, \u201cDid somebody in here paint my horse\u2019s tail red? If so, let him be a man about it and step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
A huge blacksmith stepped out from behind a stack of barbed wire. His arms were as big as posts, and he appeared to be chiseled from solid rock. Everyone in the store fell silent as he snarled, \u201cI did it. And just what do you have to say about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Faced with a genuine crisis-management situation, the cowboy looked the massive blacksmith over and sized up his options in a flash. \u201cIt sure looks to me like the first coat is dry,\u201d he said. \u201cDo you want to apply the second one, or should I?\u201d<\/p>\n
There are times that call for righteous indignation. No less than Jesus went through the Temple precincts turning over the vendors\u2019 tables and setting animals on sale for sacrifice free. But some call for discretion. To reply in haste to every irksome provocation you encounter in life will not make you heroic or set all those situations right. It will simply give you the well-deserved reputation of being a hot-head.<\/p>\n
The late F.B. Meyer gave some sound advice on what to do in a crisis. He wrote: \u201cNever act in panic, nor allow a man to dictate to you; calm yourself and be still; force yourself into the quiet of your closet until the pulse beats normally and the scare has ceased to disturb. When you are most eager to act is the time when you will make the most pitiable mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proverbs 29:20 offers this wisdom about crisis management: \u201cDo you see a man who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is sometimes necessary to confront. Principle must not be forsaken, and holy things are not to be sullied. More often than not, however, the lack of self-restraint in a crisis brings on a disaster of major — and occasionally fatal — proportions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Days seldom follow the schedules we\u2019ve made for them. There is always an interruption. Something breaks. The person you depended on doesn\u2019t perform. And there are those maddening moments of crisis that throw us off balance. There\u2019s an old story of a cowboy who walked out of the saloon only to discover that someone had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[93,518],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}