During World War II, the British Department of Information designed three ‘home publicity’ posters. The first said, ‘Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory.’ The second said, ‘Freedom is in peril.’ The third and most famous said, ‘Keep calm and carry on.’ The department printed 2.45 million of the third poster, but they were never publicly displayed. That motto had all but vanished from Britain’s consciousness when a bookstore-owning couple in Alnwick – Stuart and Mary Manley – discovered an original copy of the poster at the bottom of a box of old books. With Pharaoh’s chariots bearing down on Moses from behind, and the Red Sea in front of him, he was ‘between a rock and a hard place’. That’s when God gave Moses these instructions: ‘The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still’ (Exodus 14:13-14 NIV). That sounds an awful lot like keep calm and carry on, doesn’t it? What would be the hardest thing to do if Egyptian chariots were charging straight at you at full speed? To be still! When we find ourselves in this sort of situation, we want to do something – anything. We have a nervous energy that tries to solve problems as quickly as possible. But these are the tests that reveal trust. Sometimes God leads us to a place where we have nowhere to turn but to Him. Is that where you are today? Then trust God’s power, love, and faithfulness, and He will bring you safely through it.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.