Recently someone at my company suffered a sudden heart attack and died. After such a terrible incident, the topic of having someone in my own department trained in CPR was discussed and anyone interested in being trained would join the company’s response team. However, we were encouraged in our thinking to evaluate if we thought we could perform in an emergency situation before signing up.
I thought that this point was quite insightful as learning how to respond during an emergency is very different than actually responding in an emergency. Performing CPR on a lifeless dummy is not quite the same as making life and death decisions – decisions that need to be made in an instant and modified on the fly if the expected outcome is not occurring. No matter how trained you are, you never quite know how well you will be able to apply that training in an real life situation where you won’t have the time to consult a manual or someone more experienced.
Often times my Christian walk feels very similar. I can read my bible, read Christian literature, listen to sermons, and talk with other believers. But when I suddenly find myself in a difficult situation, I am not always sure how to handle matters in a way that gives Glory to God. And it is often those times where my decisions can have the biggest outcome, either good or bad.
During our discussion at work we were told that we could take the emergency training class, but if after taking that class we felt we may not be cut out for such a role, that was okay. As a Christian, I don’t have that luxury. Whether I want to or not, I have to deal with life’s twists and turns according to His truths. If I fall completely on my face I need to get up, do my best to rectify the situation, and learn from it. How could I have handled that better? Are there any biblical principles that could have been applied that I missed?
I believe I have an obligation, no matter how painful, to evaluate my “performance”, make improvements to my method, and be better prepared for the next emergency. When things get tough, quitting is not an option.
