One of the great personal, and collective challenges facing our nation today… and increasingly anywhere in the world… is how to be spiritually calm in times of tension and trouble.

World troubles expanding

Think about the heavy pack of troubles facing the world today in the last months of 2024.

Stress factors are running high. People in the millions are migrating in hordes from one nation (usually with existing societal tensions) to other countries where they hope to find more safety and a greater measure of peace and prosperity. And of course, others, who are more nefarious, are seeking places to commit more crime.

America is on the receiving end of great numbers of legal and illegal immigration. So are Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada and a number of other nations. Such large-scale shifting often triggers unsteady economies, religious conflict, and economic chaos.

Typically, large population shifts also trigger international terrorism and warfare, as we saw this week between Lebanon and Israel after the pager attack against Hezbollah. Consider the hot war tensions currently in Ukraine and Russia, as well as the growing tensions between China and the U.S. in the Pacific, the Middle East, and in a number of other nations.

All that…. and an election year. Actually, by the end of 2024 more than 70 nations around the world will have had critical national elections. Elections that will affect nearly half of the world’s population.

Of course, the U.S. is currently experiencing a tumultuous election run-up, as well. Already we’ve had two assassination attempts against former President Trump. Historically, in the recent past at least, the U.S. has shied away from open political violence, but that is rapidly changing and will impact all of us as our society becomes more hostile.

World trouble – not surprising

Yet with all this we are not surprised. Through the pages of the Bible, Jesus Christ personally foretold or inspired His prophets and apostles to foretell the troubles and tensions that our era would endure near the end of this age – “the time of the end” leading up to Christ’s second coming (see Mathew 24, Luke 21).

If we understand human nature and its selfish carnality manifested in humanity, and spurred on by Satan, the Devil, then the personal and national greed and selfishness manifested by wars and rumors of war will not shock us as the return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ approaches (James 4:1-3).

Stay calm

What should be our personal reaction to the turmoil around us? We should develop the emotional self-control that allows us, through God’s Spirit, to project a calm and peaceful state of mind.

In Psalm 131:2-3, King David was inspired by God to illustrate, with a beautiful word-picture, just what a calm spirit and outlook should feel like:

“Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a weaned child with his mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
From this time forth and forever.”

Let us stay calm, and close to God and Christ, striving to be faithfully dedicated to God’s way of life.

~ Randy Stiver