Daily Lesson for October 3, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 6 verses 47 through 49:

47 "Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great."

The flood hits every house in town. That's the first thing we've all got to realize. We really cannot protect ourselves from the storm and rising waters.  Floods are a given and they hit the good and bad, just and unjust alike.  In other words, just because we love God and follow Jesus doesn't make us immune to life's storms.  We should all be prepared for the river's crest.

How?  Jesus tells us how: by digging deep. I take that to mean by digging deep into our own personhood.

Last year, sociologist and favorite author Brene Brown put out a book titled "Rising Strong".  In it she described her findings when researching what she called people of resilient strength.  That's people who have been hit by the tidewaters of life -- divorce, losing a job, losing a spouse, surviving an accident.  What her research discovered was that the people who were most apt to have survived and even "risen strong" after these storms were those who had a deep sense of themselves and their own emotional life. They were people had explored their own emotional life and had reflected on their own emotional and cognitive responses.

"Resilience is more available to people curious about their own line of thinking and behaving," she said.

 In other words, resilience is more available to people who know themselves.  They have not only acted and reacted. They have also reflected. They are aware of themselves, their emotions, and therefore a lot calmer and more in control of themselves -- even as the surge waters rise.

The house that is left standing is the one whose foundation is built deep into the rock.  And the person who rises up after the storm is the one who dug down before it.