Prose

(Read Psalm 27:13-14)


I remember a scene from a film about Alexander the Great’s life where he caught one of his soldiers sleeping at the time of his duty.
 
 After waking up the soldier, the king asked the him of his name. And then it happened that King Alexander found out his soldier’s name was also Alexander. So, the Macedonian conqueror asked the same question to his soldier for so many times, each time with a louder tone. As the king’s voice gets louder, the soldier’s soft and trembling reply progessively turned into a loud and emphatic shout. In that way, King Alexander was reminding his soldier of how he should be acting as a soldier, and more especially, as one who bears the king’s name.
 
We Sunday School teachers do a quite similar thing to our students. Whenever the kids get out of focus from their lesson, we will just shout, “Attitude check?” and their reply would be “Praise the Lord!” And we would repeat it in the similar way that Alexander the Great did until we get the desired response. Only then will we notice that our students are back to their proper focus. We can therefore think that the great Macedonian ruler used his repetitive question as an ‘attitude check’ to his negligent soldier.
 
As I evaluate my life as a young minister, I found myself also in need being ‘attitude checked’ repeatedly. Oftentimes, whenever I go through some tough trials and circumstances, I begin to get out of focus of God’s faithfulness over my life. Like some of my students, I can found myself at times ‘running around’ in panic, being forgetful of God’s word. Worse still, I become childishly impatient of waiting for the Lord, so I would do things on my own. So obviously, those attempts lead to failure. And I tell you what; I could have given up in my life as a young man of God if not for His grace.
 
Going back to the Scriptures, we can read in Psalm 27:13 the psalmist singing, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living!” Other Hebrew manuscripts render the verse in an emphatic way, where it was written as, “Oh! Had I not believed…?” If we are to follow those manuscripts, it would sound like the psalmist was actually reminding himself of God’s goodness even when things get tough around him. He must have reminded himself of what he believed in – that he believed in God’s word and its promises. So, some sense, we can say that the psalmist was ‘attitude checking’ himself!
 
Tough circumstances are certain to come in our lives as Christians. Even our Lord Jesus Christ told us that “in the world” we “will have tribulation” (John 16:33). And those troubles are to test our faith and perseverance, just as how fire tests the gold ores. The good news is that He gave us His peace. This peace assures us that if Christ had overcomed his personal tribulation, we can also share with His victory. All we have to do is to “wait for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14) and repeatedly remind ourselves of how faithful and true His word is. For our God is also called by the Name “Faithful and True” (Revelation 19:11), therefore He cannot lie about His promises to us.
 
Attitude Check?!