Do you remember those "duck and cover" practice drills we kids of the fifties and sixties had to perform? That was in the darkest days of the cold war and our teachers tried not to scare us with the adult knowledge that the Soviet Union might possibly send one of its nukes our way.
Then, there were the routine fire drills. The worst part was the inital blast of the fire siren. But we kids sure learned how to immediately stand up from our desks, form a line and walk in an orderly fashion out to the playground.
I was a speedy runner in school. Our gym teacher had us practice how to explode from the crouch into a full-blown sprint. Then we practiced handing the baton smoothly. At the district meets, the skills we'd honed helped us win races.
As a pianist, I spent hours practicing scales and arpeggi and Hanon and Czerny. Then, when I played a Mozart Sonata, the scalework in the piece came automatically.
As Believers, I hope we practice our faith skills just as diligently. Do we:
thank God and worship Him every day?
pray for the needs of others every day?
read and meditate on God's Word daily?
give?
serve?
instantly repent when the Spirit makes us aware of a wrong attitude or action?
bring every thought captive before it takes us captive?
Then, when it's no longer a drill, but the real big test or crisis, we're skilled in automatically drawing near to our HELPER.
I hope we don't wait until the bomb flies overhead to realize with dismay that we have no idea what to do.
"There everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who buillt his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did no fall because it had its foundation on the rock." (Matt. 7:24)
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