Proper Posture

It’s amazing how much having the wrong posture can create problems.

Headaches, muscles spasms, improper balance can all be caused by a lack of good posture. Despite this awareness, bad posture isn’t uncommon. Long past are the days when children balanced books on their head in order to ensure that they were walking the proper way.

Our posture isn’t just indicative of future health problems; it’s symbolic of the way that we approach life. Too often, when faced with difficult situations we’re tempted to lower our head, slump our shoulders, and simply shuffle through the challenge that we’ve met.

The problem with this is that when we’ve done that for one circumstance, we’re tempted to do it for another. Our improper stance becomes accepted over time, until it becomes our first response when reality doesn’t align with our plans. It can get to the point where we don’t even knowing what standing up straight feels like any more; our outlooks and our posture are ones of defeat.

The Christian, however, needs to make sure that they walk upright through the circumstances that God has given us. After all, we know that the things that come across our paths did not arrive there without our Father’s knowledge. We can have confidence in the midst of the confusion, we can have clarity in the midst of chaos; not because we know what will happen, but because we know the One that does. Life may not be easy, but we know the One with whom our future is secured.

To use a baseball analogy, it can be hard to approach the plate with confidence when all we expect is for life to throw us curveballs. However, as any baseball player knows, confidence is exactly what you need when you step inside the batter’s box. If you go in there expected to be defeated, you most likely will. And while both the baseball player and the child of God need to know the proper stance, only the child of God has the confidence that victory has already been secured.