“Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong.”

AFK is shorthand for, “Away from Keyboard”. That is what is happening in Hollywood today as the Writer’s Guild goes on strike and lays down their pens and lifts their hands off of their keyboards until they can resolve their differences with the major Studios.  Strikes happen when a group of workers believe they can wield economic power by stop doing the work they perform.  “Management” has to then decide if that calculation is true or not and either resolve the issues and get everyone back to work or wait it out and see who, the company or the workers, feels the worst pain first.  I’ve been a part of labor disputes (on both sides) and only once did I experience a strike and it only lasted a day.  But, that one day was a breaking down of a part of a trust relationship that took years and years to build up.  What we may not realize that a “strike” is as much of a mindset as an activity. That means that while you are reading this there may be someone in your organization who is thinking that today they are just about fed up, tired of putting up with what they have to go through, needing to take a day away from the chaos, putting down their pens and backing away from their keyboards until someone hears them out and changes things for the better. It’s worth looking around and seeing who might be “striking” on their own today and needs to be listened to.

It seems to me that quitting, giving up, sitting it out, or stopping because of resentment or trying to get our way is not the path that God wants us to follow. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to stand up for what we believe and take stands, but in how we do so we can reflect Christ or not.  Jesus didn’t back down and at the same time wasn’t a quitter. Imagine that when He and His followers were being wrongly persecuted He had decided that He’d take His Disciples and head for the hills and find an outpost in the desert and create their own city and seek to withdraw from those who disagreed with Him. Had He decided to “strike”, well things would have been quite different and I doubt I’d be writing this or you’d be reading.  Instead, he modeled what Paul told us to be: on guard, firm in our faith, courageous and strong.  Let’s take that attitude to work with us today.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 16:13 (New Living Translation)