Imagine yourself lounging in a hammock, feeling as content as a cat in the warmth of the sunlight. These moments of calm can be rare in our busy lives, where stress is often an unwelcome companion. This week, we’re visiting a powerful story about Jesus who, during a crazy stressful storm, actually took a nap! It’s a great reminder to pull out when you’re not feeling calm.
We also have a fun quick tip to help you re-focus in stressful times: try snacking on something sour, such as tangy candy or a zesty lemon. You’d be surprised at how this simple trick can help! We hope this all inspires YOU to find a peace & calm in the middle of any stress or anxiety you’re feeling today.
What’s New!
Monday Story:
- Julie Lyles Carr the days after holidays understanding what calm is | Jesus calms the storm
Tuesday Key Verse:
- Proverbs 15:18 – A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.
Wednesday Prayer:
- God, I want to help be a calm in hard times. Help me know your peace so that others can have peace. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Thursday Question:
- What helps you feel calm? Is there a song or a stuffed animal or a scent that helps you calm down?
Friday Fun Fact:
- Q: What is something you can eat that can help you feel calmer?
- A. Something sour, like a sour candy or something lemon.
Show Notes:
To get this week’s episode and daily text prompts, text the word Go to 89419.
If you are in Canada, text GodOnTheGo to 866-729-1065
Transcription:
Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a feeling that was very interesting. It was just a little while after all of my big kids had left and gone back to their homes after the holidays, we had had a house full of people,. Everything from friends and neighbors to our kids who were visiting from out of town and people over all the time and people sleeping on air mattresses, and the kitchen running 24/7. At least that’s what it felt like. And so, I had this moment after everyone had left and I thought, what is it that I’m feeling? And then I realized, oh, I feel “calm”. It was a very interesting feeling after all of the wild stuff that had been going on for several weeks.
It reminded me of when I was a kid growing up in California and we had some friends who had the most amazing swimming pool. It was so cool. And their backyard was really, really neat. And there would be summer days that we would go over there. They were good friends of my parents. And we, the kids, would swim and take time to just be in the sun and paddle around and we would jump off the sides and do tricks and all kinds of things. And our parents would sit with their friends and they would grill hamburgers and make dinner and it would be so great. And at the end of that day, we get home, we’d get our showers, we’d get into our pajamas, and get into bed. And I can remember that feeling of being a little bit sunburned and really tired from playing in the water, and feeling so cozy and calm after such a sweet day.
I’m Julie Lyles Carr and this is God on the Go, part of the Purposely Podcast Network where we want to help you make the minutes matter. And we’ve been talking about emotions that don’t always get the spotlight. We talk a lot about things like love or fear, anger, but we don’t always talk about what it means to feel awkward or to feel confused. And I don’t think we talk about what it means to feel calm very much. I don’t know that we always remember what it even is to be calm with all the things going on in our world when things are calm in our world today, it can almost feel a little weird. We live in a time where we have stuff happening all the time. We’ve got video games pinging and we’ve got school class bells going off and we’ve got our apple watches dinging at us. We don’t have a lot of quiet in our world, and that can make it kind of hard to recognize when we do have a moment of calm, when we feel calm.
Calm can feel like a place of being content. Maybe even a little not tired, but just sort of even, where you’re not up, you’re not down, you’re just sort of even. And because we don’t always experience a lot of calm today, it can be a little bit hard to identify when we do feel that way, because let’s face it, there is a lot that is not calm in our everyday lives. Now sometimes the opposite side of calm is when we feel stressed, or we feel anxious. When we’re worried about something. And I thought this was really interesting. There is actually something you can eat when you want to feel calmer. This is really interesting. Are you ready for this? If you are feeling not calm, if you’re feeling anxious or stressed, you can eat something and it will help you feel calmer. You ready? You can eat something sour, like sour candy or maybe something lemon.
Doctors say that when you’re tasting something really sour, it makes you focus on what is right now, instead of the things that you might be thinking about in the future. It is amazing to me how God made our bodies and the fact that eating something sour keeps you really present, right now in this moment. I think that gives us a really good clue about what it means to feel calm. We’re not thinking about stuff in the future that’s making us worried, or we’re not thinking about stuff in the past. We’re just thinking about this moment now, how our good God is with us, how we’re enjoying this moment, how we’re not super super up. We’re not super super down. We’re just calm.
Jesus actually shows us how to be calm. One time he was on a boat with his friends, his disciples, and he was so calm that he started taking a nap. So, there are all these people around him and they’re chatting and they’re talking and they’re on this boat, and Jesus just lays down and goes to sleep. Well. In the middle of Jesus’s nap, a big storm started to come up. Now I can tell you, his friends did not feel calm. They were so worried about this storm. They were so upset about it. They finally woke Jesus up and said, “There’s this terrible storm, and what are we going to do? What are we going to do?” And Jesus calmed the storm, which also helped calm his friends. It reminds me that this feeling of calm, if I understand it and if I understand how it feels to just slow down and be right here, right now, and to be calm, it means that I can actually be someone who can help calm other people. Have you been around people that kind of stir up a lot of drama or they like to have arguments, or they like to have, I don’t know, some kind of controversy going on? And it can be a place that creates a lot of storm amongst your friends in your class, on your team, but what if you became the calm?
It makes me think of this verse in Proverbs 15:18:
A hot tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.
How amazing would it be to be the person who can help bring a feeling of calm to other people? And what that means is just being right here, right now, what that means is not getting involved in fights that don’t need to be fights. What that means is knowing and being confident that God is with you, that he’s going to take care of things and that you can be calm. Calm. It’s one of those feelings that we don’t talk about a whole lot, but wow, is it a great feeling to have. It is a great feeling to notice and it is a great feeling to share with other people. The sense of being calm.
I want to ask you to text the word GO. That’s GO to the number 89419 because we’ve got some great resources for you that we can send to you, including trivia questions and verses and prayer prompts and discussion questions. We would love to share that with you and I’ll see you next time here on God on the Go.
