Panic

A pastor and his family on an early morning flight had been delayed for hours and were feeling sleep-deprived and anxious. As the plane landed, another family behind them attempted to exit quickly, with the teenager rushing ahead. The pastor shares:

I stuck my arm into the aisle to block the rest of the family from passing, like I was Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. “None shall pass.” “We’re all trying to get off this plane,” I said to the family, “Let’s wait our turn!”

They had words with me that I cannot share here and pushed past my arm. I was fuming.

As the passenger disembarked, a flight attendant approached, explaining that the teenage girl had been experiencing a panic attack and needed assistance. The family had been trying to help her. The family was not rude; they were desperate.

How did I, a former chaplain trained to notice physiological signs of stress, miss that this young lady needed help? How did I let my core value of courtesy block my capacity to see what was really going on?

I was operating out of assumption and unable to see reality. Rather than see that this young lady needed help getting off the plane, all I could see was a family rudely skipping the line, and I must intervene.

Whether we move toward self-righteousness or self-protection, the common denominator is self. This is what every follower of God has in common: We get caught up in ourselves, we get triggered, we forget others, and we forget the Lord.

A couple's destination wedding was almost in jeopardy when their dog, Chickie, chewed up the groom's passport just days before the wedding. Donato Frattaroli and Magda Mazri connected five years prior when Magda worked at Donato’s restaurant. After three years of friendship, the couple began dating, and eventually began to plan their dream wedding at a destination in Italy, where they both have family and friends.

After eighteen months of planning and preparation, it seemed like everything was set. But just days before departure, Chickie ruined everything by chewing up Donato’s passport.

“It’s hard to describe," said Donato when he first saw the damaged passport. "It’s not like all the joy left me, but it was definitely panic.” Magda laughs when remembering the incident, because she had to act quickly to ensure their plans would stay intact. She says Donato is usually the calm one, but on that day she was able to put into practice everything she’d learned from their relationship, and quickly took charge.

They explored the possibility of obtaining a same-day passport, but the availability of appointments proved to be a major hurdle. They were willing to travel anywhere in the country to secure a passport, but with the help of local officials, managed to secure an appointment in their hometown of Boston several days later.

Reflecting on the passport ordeal, the couple found perspective during a complicated journey home after their honeymoon in France. They encountered missed flights, cancellations, and a challenging return to Boston via Amtrak. Through these trials, they learned to adapt and pivot, a valuable lesson for their journey together as a married couple.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When mishaps occur, accidents take place, or circumstances turn tragic, God is capable of supernaturally transforming our tragedies into triumph--and even if they don't work out the way we want, God will always remain with us.

Twelve-year-old Amelia Loverme hadn’t received any formalized training when she saw her twin brother Charlie in need of medical intervention. But she didn’t let that stop her from getting the job done.

Charlie said, “[I thought] I was going to die. It's just scary and you just don't know what's going to happen next and it's just really scary.” Amelia added, “It was just instinct, I didn't really know what to do, I just feel like I had to help him.”

And help him she did. The siblings were both in their lunch period at Leicester Middle School when Charlie began choking on a piece of mozzarella cheese. When other students in his immediate vicinity were too scared or confused to know what to do, Amelia leapt into action. Security footage caught her giving her brother a series of abdominal thrusts known as the Heimlich maneuver.

Jason Loverme, the twins’ father said, “Adults should talk to their kids about life-saving stuff like this. Whether you think it registers or not, they may tune it out but clearly something registered and she recalled it when she needed it.” Jason says a lack of training should never inhibit someone in the position of potentially giving life-saving help. “If you can help somebody and you can react regardless of if you're nervous or not, you should.”

For her quick thinking and heroism, Amelia was honored by the official school committee, and a public honor from a local law enforcement agency might be in the works.

Note: You can watch the video of Amelia saving her brother’s life here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Anyone can become God's vessel of deliverance; all it takes is willingness to see the need and act accordingly to the Spirit's leading.

One of the tourist attractions in Chicago, Illinois, is the Willis Tower and SkyDeck. It boasts of being the third tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, soaring some 1430 feet into the air. It has 108 floors and on the 103rd floor there is a SkyDeck with spectacular 360-degree views of the city. On a clear day, the visibility stretches out over 50 miles into four States!

If that’s not enough to boost your adrenaline, you can step out onto one of the glass viewing boxes, called “The Ledge.” Each of the boxes extends 4.3 feet outside the building and are made of 1.5-inch laminated glass and can hold up to 10,000 pounds of weight!

In June 2019, a woman and her two children stepped out on the ledge and the glass ledge splintered into thousands of pieces. As you can imagine the family was visibly shaken by the experience. The Willis Tower officials said that no one was in danger because the “protective layer did what it was supposed to do.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus often challenged the foundations that we build our lives upon. Sometimes “life happens” and there are cracks under our feet and in those moments, we then decide whether to trust the Designer and master Engineer.

In a recent interview with INC, Jonathan McBride, who served as the director of the Presedential Personnel Office in the White House, discusses leadership in crisis moments. Near the end of the article, McBride shares this insight:

You want people who will speak truth to power. In a crisis, you really don’t want to be “yessed.” But the main thing to tune in to is people who are calm, who think clearly. At the White House, we used to tell a story about an astronaut who posed a question to a group of people: “Say you’re at the International Space Station and suddenly your oxygen goes out. You know you’ve got about 10 seconds before you start to lose consciousness. What do you do?” People started blurting out all these things they would do first—and he interrupts and says, “No. You think for eight seconds, and you make one move.”

It would be tempting, as the calendar (changes to) 2021, to view 2020 as a nightmare that will soon pass and quickly be forgotten. Take a mulligan year and try again as if the 2020 hellscape never happened. Writing for 1517, Chad Bird has other plans altogether: this year has been a great year for the church to rediscover some of its central beliefs about sin, repentance, and redemption.

He writes:

Neither this global pandemic, the gross injustices, the racial tensions, the mad riots, the macabre political theatre, not even Tiger King should have shocked anyone, especially those schooled in the Torah and the prophets. All human history, from Cain and Abel onward, has amply demonstrated that destruction and stupidity, navel-gazing and bloodshed, the ubiquity of fools, and the thin veneer between civilization and anarchy is the norm, not the exception.

This year just happens to be a rather colorful sampling of our commonly shared low anthropology. Welcome to Humanity 101. And don’t worry: it won’t get better. […]

And yet …

[W]e are not the Church of Chicken Little but the Church of Jesus Christ. We do not run around screaming that “the sky is falling.” There is no panic in heaven. Over the chaos of this world reigns the King of kings, Jesus the Resurrected, before whom every knee will eventually bow, whether they like it or not. Every governmental authority now — presidents, kings, prime ministers, you name it — are in lame-duck administrations. Their time is ending. Put not your trust in politicians or parties or ballot boxes. Christ and his kingdom are everlasting. And into that kingdom he calls us all to find forgiveness, life, and peace.

The defining moment of Stanislav Petrov's life was the moment he decided to do nothing.

The Russian military duty officer was just a few hours into his shift when alarms blared, warning of intercontinental missiles that had been launched from an American base. The alarms turned out to be in error.

Many military duty officers might jump to take defensive measures, and this was indeed an assumption Petrov felt looming over him. During one of most tense periods of the Cold War, a series of events had led to Russia living in constant fear and anticipation of a US attack.

Before taking immediate defensive action, Petrov first sought clarity on the reality of the situation: "After five nerve-racking minutes — electronic maps and screens were flashing as he held a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other, trying to absorb streams of incoming information — Colonel Petrov decided that the launch reports were probably a false alarm."

Though Petrov was later reprimanded for not immediately reacting to the situation that confronted him, Petrov defended his inaction, pointing out that the alert system had been rushed to use and was likely inaccurate.

"We are wiser than the computers," he said.

Potential Preaching Angles: Rather than assuming the worst about our neighbors, true love "hopes all things." Patient love often takes going against our "reasonable" assumptions, and looking for reasons why our defensive posture might actually be misguided. Does lack of trust in God sometimes lead us to misguided action, taking matters into our own hands? Can we be still and trust God?

There is nothing, —no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, —that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment, but as I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart, no sorrow will ever disturb me, no trial will ever disarm me, no circumstance will cause me to fret, for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is.

On July 21, 1861, raw Yankee recruits marched toward the Confederate Army camping at Bull Run, 30 miles southwest of Washington. The Union soldiers were overconfident and acted like they were headed toward a sporting event.

Congressmen, ladies, and all sorts of spectators trailed along with lunch baskets to observe the fun. But the courage of the Confederates (who stood their ground like a stone wall— giving their leader, Thomas J. Jackson, his nickname) and the arrival of Confederate reinforcements threw the Union forces into a panic—even though the Union had superior forces!

One observer wrote, "We called to them, tried to tell them there was no danger, called them to stop, implored them to stand. We called them cowards, denounced them in the most offensive terms…but all in vain; a cruel crazy, mad hopeless panic possessed them."

Fear and panic have a way of doing that —overwhelming us emotionally even though we have the spiritual resources to deal with the situation. We are better able to face into fearful situations—and stop a "mad, hopeless, panic" from possessing us —if we prepare ourselves soberly for the challenges life will hand us.

Is it possible to be scared to death? During the January 17, 1994 Northridge/Los Angeles earthquake, over 100 Californians literally died of fright, according to Robert Kloner, cardiologist at the Good Samaritan Hospital in L.A.

His research has shown that excessive fear can cause sudden cardiac death. In many cases the terrorized brain triggers the release of a mix of chemicals so potent it causes the heart to contract so fiercely it never relaxes again.

In a Cleveland study, coroners studied the hearts of 15 assault victims who died even though their assailants had not wounded them badly enough to fatally injure their internal organs. Charles Hirsch, now chief medical officer for New York City, determined that 11 of the 15 had torn fibers and lesions in their hearts most likely caused by mortal fear.

Several anthropologists have reported that in many primitive cultures a curse from an all-powerful wizard or medicine man was enough to kill a believer.

What is attributed to supernatural power actually has medical explanations. Neurologist Martin A. Samuels of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has done research in this area, tells of his cat coming across a field mouse. The cat simply put its paw on the mouse's tail and batted it about a bit. Within 20 minutes the mouse died despite having no serious injuries. "Animals commonly drop dead under these circumstances," says Samuels. Fear is equally dangerous to a person's spiritual life.

The best definition I've heard of a problem is, "A problem is something I can do something about!"

The San Francisco Examiner (7/7/93) reported that the California State Automobile Association claims office received a package by Federal Express. The unknown contents were bundled in a Fruit Loops cereal box.

Workers quickly became suspicious. The FBI had only days before uncovered a terrorist bombing ring in New York, and the media had been crackling with stories of terrorist bombings.

Security guards called the police, and about 400 office workers were evacuated from the building. The bomb squad soon arrived on the scene. The Fruit Loops cereal box was "neutralized" with a small cannon, and its contents were blasted into the air. The bomb squad, however, found no explosives. Inside the suspicious package had been $24,000 in cash. The box contained bundles of $20 bills, $1,000 of which were destroyed in the blast.

"This was a first, finding money," said platoon leader Jim Seim. The package "arrived in such a way that it aroused our suspicions," he said. "We were able to render it neutral. We always err on the side of caution."

In our world it is prudent to use caution, but blanket suspicion can destroy things more valuable than money. Perhaps that is why Christ told us to be shrewd as snakes, and innocent as doves.

When a church in a rural section of Canada was being moved, the steeple hit an electric power line and caught fire.

One of the men rushed to a nearby farmhouse and telephoned the fire station. "Our church is on fire!" he blurted out.

"Where is it located?" the lady asked. The man hurriedly told her.

"I'm sorry, but you are out of our jurisdiction," she replied.

"That's okay!" the man shouted, "You send the truck out! The fire will be in your district before you get to it!"

The church was saved!

Faith is a refusal to panic.