You can not prepare for every crisis; sometimes you just have to react. 

The question is, “How well, do you react to a crisis?” 

Certainly some people react swifter and better than others when faced with something that is sudden and unexpected. 

I’ve seen it in hockey where a goalie is prepared for a shot from the point and then just in front of him the puck gets tipped. You can’t prepare for that; you can only react. And how fast that goalie reacts is the difference between the puck ending up in his equipment or the back of the net. 

The other day I was faced with a crisis. 

When COVID first hit, I started live-streaming a devotional to my congregation once a week on Thursday mornings at 8:30 am.

I took a break over the summer, but didn’t get back to doing them until the new year.

I don’t have a studio, so I have to set up for it each week. There are lights, a camera, tripod, iPad and computer all to set up. The set up takes just over a half hour. 

This week I was set up and ready to go one hour and forty-five minutes before I was to go live. 

About forty-five minutes before the devotional I got the streaming software active and set, just waiting for me to hit one button to go live. 

With twenty-five minutes to go, I hit the go live button. With five minutes to go, I switched the scene to a count down and music. 

It was all going perfectly: the picture on the screen was counting down and everything was set to automatically switch to the video feed of me looking into the camera and saying hi.

With under one minute to air, I was standing in my place. And then, all of a sudden, my camera fell from the tripod. 

What? I had forty seconds to air. I went for the camera, got hold of it and promptly put it back on the tripod. 

Everything was good; nothing had unplugged. 

I took a deep breath and counted down, 6, 5, 4, 3 … and then the camera fell off the tripod again! 

I went to grab the camera; this time the power cord had unplugged. 

I was live … the screen was black. I made a few comments like, “Oh no.” I sounded like Mr. Bill from the 70’s Saturday Night Live show. 

I plugged the power cord back in and turned on the camera. Then I swung around to face the camera, but everything was still black. I fiddled with the software in hopes to get the camera to connect again, but it was not happening. 

So quickly I switch my camera source to my laptop’s built-in camera and presto, I was visible. 

I thought it only took about a minute to do all that but looking back at the recording, the screen was dark for about 2 1/2 minutes. 

I need to work on my reaction time in a crisis.

Here’s the thing: What is the first thing you do when you face an unexpected crisis? I will bet that, when your adrenaline is flowing, your reaction is to do something – do something yourself. To lessen my reaction time, I need to first call on God for help and then let Him guide my next moves. I’m sure that most of us need to work on adding God to the beginning of our reaction time. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: At what point in your crisis reaction do you seek God? Leave your comments and questions below.

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