Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-150

TURNING TYPHOONS INTO TAILWINDS

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

See, I am making all things new. Revelation 21:5.

Norman Vincent Peale, the well-known ‘positive thinker’ was sitting one time in the co-pilot’s seat of a DC-6 in the Far East in an area where typhoons roam violently over land and sea. He asked the pilot about the problems of flying aircraft in typhoon territory. ‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘they’re not exactly anything to fool with. They may cover an area of three to five hundred miles and consist of circular high winds rotating counter-clockwise.’

Well, asked Dr. Peale, what do you do when you encounter a typhoon? ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘one thing is sure. I don’t try to buck it. I just get on its edge and go the way it’s going. In that way I turn typhoons into tailwinds.’

Life’s fortunate people are those who turn trouble into triumph, who refuse to believe that they have to be prisoners of the ‘humdrum’. They have a zest and vitality not because everything’s going their way, but they have tapped the creative forces deep within them, and allowed the child within them to express an enthusiasm for life that is not stymied by problems or difficulties.

As someone has wisely said, the basic problem most people have is that they’re not doing enough to solve their basic problem!

Help me to believe that the person who found he had no more problems and got down on his knees and asked ‘Lord, don’t you trust me anymore?’ wasn’t a nut! Amen.

Shalom! Rowland Croucher