Transformers
I will start with a caveat: I’m not an electrician. My understanding of electricity is very limited, and what I do understand makes me dangerous. Several years ago, Beverley and I re-tiled our kitchen back splash, and Dover Johnston, a church member who had more knowledge and experience in his little finger than I will ever have in my whole brain, walked me through it. “You can do it, just be sure that you tape around the outside of your receptacles after you pull them out. I didn’t do it, until I had been shocked about three times. I then took his advice. Me working around electricity is not a good thing. But I do understand what a transformer does. It is a device that takes a large amount of electricity and “transforms” it down to a safe amount for the appliance or device one is using. Travel abroad and a person not only has to have an adaptor so the plug fits, you also must “transform” that higher dose of French electricity to the voltage that the American hair dryer or curling iron or electric razor needs. If this is not done, that hair dryer purchased in America will end up fried. People can also act as transformers. There are people who can take a lot of fear, or anxiety, or panic, and when it passes through them it is conveyed back to others in a reduced state. The opposite is also true. There are some people who take anxiety (or fear or drama in general) and they can “transform” it into an intensified, higher, voltage. You know people who do this. Transform it down, or, transform it up. If I told you that the basement at the church is flooded, there are some people who will take that information and spiral it up, creating a greater crisis than actually exists. They will try to find people to blame, they will say unhealthy things, they will make it sound like the entire building is destroyed to a point that it can never be used again. There are others who will take that information and think about a plan, they understand that the flooded basement is not the end of the world (or the church), and they “transform” the energy down. (The basement is not flooded.) As we live in this time of the Coronavirus Pandemic we can easily find people doing both. Even when they are telling “the truth,” there are some who take the news and cause everyone’s level of fear and anxiety to go through the roof. They are “transforming” the healthy fear (there is healthy fear) into unhealthy fear, panic, and anxiety. Don’t keep listening to them. Turn it off. Find one or two news sources that give the information (without the commentary) each day. Also, I must ask, what kind of transformer are you? Are you one who takes the information (about Coronavirus or anything) and escalates the situation? Who stirs it and stirs it until the drama is spilling over the top? Or, are you one of the many people who takes a crisis and offers it back to the world with a lower level of energy and anxiety? That is who God call us to be. When Jesus was giving his disciples his final words before he went to the cross, he told them, “peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives. Let not your heart be troubled, do not let your heart be afraid.”