In 2012 the astronauts aboard the International Space Station were awakened in the middle of the night by a fire alarm. All six of the crew members on board quickly, but not rushed, made their way to Russian part of the space station to assess the situation and fight the fire. Thankfully this was an instrumentation failure and there was no fire aboard and all were able to go back to sleep.

Throughout the time while were working Astronaut Chris Hadfield recalls in his book that he remembers the entire episode was calm with their heart rates hardly beating any faster that regular. Their lives might have been in serious jeopardy but this was routine. They were prepared. Read More

While this is an awesome nerdy fact, it is also a great lesson to bring back to earth. While I believe this is something that can be taken into the Dev/Ops world (which I try to do at work) I actually think this has struck a deeper chord in my spiritual life.

My wife and I are currently on an adventure to be a part of a church plant in Portland, Oregon. While this is exciting, we are finding the reality of needing to be prepared. That means ensuring we have our move planned well, but more deeply and a certain life change for sure, is the ever-more present need to study as the astronauts do. Tirelessly, relentlessly, and with every part of ourselves.

For as long as I can remember I have known about God and believed in Him. With certain ups-and-downs in our closeness, I have never fully embraced the importance of truly studying the Bible. In recalling this story about the fire on the ISS, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The devil is going to actively be trying to stop our adventure and are we prepared to be calm and trust in the truth and rely on God?

Just as the astronauts were able to rely on their training and knowledge and trust in it, I need to be training and studying so that when the devil tries to trip us up we can remain calm and trust in God instead of reacting.