We can find control in any situation by making use of it. There are wind technologies that make use of the wind, but they do not control it.
Fun fact: turbine blades are environmental waste, that may someday show up in candy.
Photo by Dan Cristian Pu0103dureu021b on Pexels.com
The best we can do is use the available situation to our advantage, and adjust ourselves accordingly. Any given situation presents forces that seem to support or oppose our goal. Instead of fighting the forces that we cannot control, we can learn to use them, like good sailors using the wind.
6Life is hard, but there is a time and a place for everything, 7though no one can tell the future. 8We cannot control the wind+ or determine the day of our death. There is no escape in time of war, and no one can hide behind evil. 9I noticed all this and thought seriously about what goes on in the world. Why does one person have the power to hurt another?
Who Can Understand the Ways of God?
10I saw the wicked buried with honor, but God’s people had to leave the holy city and were forgotten.+ None of this makes sense. 11When we see criminals commit crime after crime without being punished, it makes us want to start a life of crime. 12They commit hundreds of crimes and live a long time, in spite of the saying:
Everyone who lives right
and respects God
will prosper,
13but no one who sins
and rejects God
will prosper or live very long.
14There is something else that doesn’t make sense to me. Good citizens are treated as criminals, while criminals are honored as though they were good citizens. 15So I think we should get as much out of life as we possibly can. There is nothing better than to enjoy our food and drink and have a good time. Then we can make it through this troublesome life that God has given us here on earth.
16Day and night I went without sleep, trying to understand what goes on in this world. 17I saw everything God does, and I realized no one can really understand what happens. We may be very wise, but no matter how much we try or how much we claim to know, we cannot understand it all.
There is much that is out of our control, but if we adjust our sails and focus on what we can control, we can make a difference in our own lives and for others who learn from our example.
I’m not talking about will-power, but about self-control. How are they different?
Self-control refers to managing your behavior to achieve goals, improve positive outcomes, and avoid negative consequences. Whereas willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations and desires to achieve long-term goals.
Self-control is a developed discipline that results from intentional work and training. The Apostle Paul compared it to a trained athlete who is running to win the race.
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control,[a] lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Notice that the Apostle Paul stresses the importance of keeping himself disciplined, so that he himself is not disqualified, in other words he doesn’t want to be a hypocrite.
We cannot expect others to have self-control, if we are practicing little self-control ourselves.
We cannot control the wind, but we can harness its power if we focus on what we can do, and work together.
I don’t know what situation you are facing today, or will face tomorrow. I don’t know what you have already overcome. We still have decisions to make and attitudes to adjust like sails on the waters. Neither the waters nor the winds are under our control, but we can choose to have faith in the one who commands both the waters and the winds, today and always.
Jesus Calms a Storm
22 One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they set out, 23 and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. 24 And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. 25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”
