Are You Tanning on the Beach While People Are Drowning?

Source: wikipedia/commons

I used to be a lifeguard and for my lifeguard training I recall doing simulation after simulation of first aid situations. One such drill, I went through the entire procedure and the evaluator’s response was… “That was excellent!” She went in to all the things I had executed perfectly… and then said: “But, you forgot one essential thing. You forgot to call for help! You could be doing first aid ’til the cows came home and you’d have no back up to help you!”

We all too often do life perfectly executed… but completely on our own strength… and then find ourselves with energy sapped and with empty results and perhaps a life lost.

We must always call for help first.

Then apply First Aid.

Another mistake we so often make, is that we spend so much time tanning on the beach, that we fail to see people drowning.

A lifeguard must always keep her watch.

And the scary thing is… drowning doesn’t always look like drowning.

“Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life…. Of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening.”

In our spiritual lives, people around us are drowning and we are watching them do it.

We need to wake up. Sleep is “a state of inactivity, with a loss of consciousness and a decrease in responsiveness to events taking place.” There are people… who have gone to sleep. …There is a lethargy and passiveness, even a laziness. There seems to be a disconnect between their so-called “spiritual life” and real life. Instead of “walking in the Spirit,” they are sleepwalking.”

As leaders in Christ, we are called to be lifeguards.

Attention Lifeguards: let us refine our skills…

Keep a sharp watch.

Call for help in an emergency.

Apply First Aid until help comes.

Let us not allow people to drown on our watch while we were… suntanning.

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