The question startled me. She was sitting on the front row. Quiet, respectful, listening intently. But it was her eyes! They held me with the kind of searching wondering, unblinking gaze known only to children in innocence. “How do you stay calm?” she inquired.
“How do I keep calm?” I responded, scrambling for an answer, wondering how I explain in language that an eight year old can grasp.
The question was not the only surprise of the morning. I had been invited to talk to a group of a few hundred homeschooled children about “growing up” in wartime England. I explained how World War I had been called “the war to end all wars,” but World War II started little more than twenty years later. I was eight years old at the time.
I told them about the day the Zeppelin flew over my home in broad daylight. It flew so low overhead that it seemed to block out the sun. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen.
I explained about the bombing and how we would go to the cellar when the sirens woke us in the middle of the night with their eerie wailing. We could hear the roar of the engines as the planes flew over our town, the crash of bombs exploding, and the barking sound of the anti-aircraft guns.
I told them about rationing, which restricted how much food we could buy or even which clothes we could purchase. I shared about friends and neighbors going off to war and how some of them were killed and others were captured and held prisoner until the war ended. They were difficult, scary days.
Then I told them about the invasion. We were told we would be alerted to the enemy’s attack by the ringing of the church bells - they had been silenced from the beginning of the war. And we heard rousing speeches from the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, telling us how to be brave and resist and to pray that God would save our country.
How Do You Keep Calm?
But the enemy never came; the church bells did not ring. After six long years, the war ended. Many years later, we learned that in light of the expected invasion and our inadequate defenses, the British government had ordered the printing of large posters, which bore the emblem of the Crown and the words “Keep Calm and Carry On!” During the long days of blackout and bombing, rationing and uncertainty, death and destruction, we had repeatedly been encouraged to “Keep Calm and Carry On!”
I asked the children if they had any questions and it was then that my little eight-year-old friend immediately spoke up: “How do you keep calm?”
I decided another story might help to answer her question. One night when we were expecting another bombing raid over a nearby town, a British army officer called Captain May took me up to the top of our house and said we could watch the bombing. The sirens blared; there was a short interval of silence, and then the drone of aircraft. That night, the planes flew over us for about 10 or 12 miles and then the guns sprang to life. The searchlights began to probe the night sky, and explosions leading to multiple fires began to glow. These were the incendiary bombs lighting the targets; the high explosives followed in a few minutes. Captain May wanted to teach me that light travels quicker than sound and did so by timing the gap between the flash of the explosion and the literally earth-shaking tremors a few seconds later. I also learned to measure how far away the bombs were dropping. But something happened that night that became foundational to my approach to life.
1. Trust in God’s Promises
My mother had hung a plaque on the wall of my room on which was written an Old Testament text: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee” (Is. 26:3, KJV).
Now remember Captain May and I were standing in total darkness until a bomb exploded and then the room was flooded with light. Each time the room was bathed in brilliant light, these words flashed in my eyes and were deeply implanted in my mind.
I would have loved the chance to sit down to talk to my little friend. She probably had no experience of bombing and fear of the church bells ringing and her Daddy going off to war, but no doubt, she did have fears of her own. And no doubt like many young children today, she had questions lurking in the back of her mind. If her facial expression was anything to go by, she had drunk in every word, she had made application in her own mind, and related to her own issues. She was really saying, “Help me. I’m just a little girl. I have my fears and when they come along I panic and I get scared. What can I do? How do you stay calm? I want to be calm.”
I told her, “This verse is a promise from God Himself to scared people of all ages. It’s a promise that He will keep us calm—it’s called perfect peace in the Bible—if and when we trust in Him. To trust in Him means first that we believe what the Bible says about Him—that He is a loving heavenly Father who cares for His children and will watch over them through life’s problems. It does not mean that nothing bad will ever come our way, but it means when things are difficult, He still loves and cares and will never leave us!”
2. Believe in God’s Character
If we believe what the Bible says about our heavenly Father then we ask ourselves a question: “Do I want Him to take charge of my life so that even when scary things happen I can trust Him to be loving and caring and staying with me?” If so, then ask Him and He will keep His promise.
As you grow through life’s changing situations you will experience many wonderful and not so wonderful things, but one thing you must remember is to “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Why? Because you are not in charge and can’t handle everything that comes your way. But He can—and He will—because He promised He would! Believing and trusting my heavenly Father is the way I stay calm. She nodded.
Her question is the same one multitudes of people in our world ask, where so much appears to be out of control. Where control is lost, panic can so easily take over. So let me say to all of us, “Feed on God’s promises as outlined in Isaiah 26:3—and backed up by the action of God raising Jesus from the dead—develop a lifestyle of trusting God one situation at a time. And don’t ever forget to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
