Day 5 – You Can Sleep In The Boat, Too

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Yeshua doesn’t describe the thief as powerful. He describes him as having a goal, but limited in his ability to carry out that goal.  He steals, kills, and destroys. These are all acts of taking. Chaos is a thief. Thieves by nature need you to have something they are able to steal. The moment you are in shalom, nothing is missing and nothing is broken. The thief has nothing they can take.

Digging Deeper

In 2 Kings 6, Elisha’s servant woke before dawn to find the city surrounded by the Aramean army with horses and chariots, making up an overwhelming force. He panicked.  Elisha’s response was one of quiet confidence:

Then Elisha prayed one simple prayer, that his servant’s eyes would be opened. And when they were, he saw that the hills were full of horses and chariots of fire surrounding the enemy.

The chaos was real.

The army was real.

What changed wasn’t the situation but the servant’s perception of it.

He finally saw what had been there the whole time. Chaos depends entirely on the absence of light to be successful.

Picture a room full of rowdy kids with the lights out, a disco ball spinning, and music blaring. Complete chaos. Running, yelling, jumping on furniture. Now the adult walks in and flips on the light switch. The room goes silent. Everyone freezes. They’ve been caught.

There’s actually a principle in physics that works the same way. Some particles, when left unobserved, can exist in multiple states and multiple places at once, spread out and unpredictable, with no fixed location and no discernible order. Physicists call this quantum superposition. The stunning thing is that the moment someone measures or interacts with these particles, they collapse into a single, specific, locatable state. It’s the atomic version of our kids with a disco ball illustration.

The chaos in our lives operates in much the same way. When you bring it under the light of YHWH’s truth, when you name it, see it clearly and refuse to be distracted by it, it suddenly becomes less overwhelming and easily defined. It collapses from being something that feels enormous and everywhere all at once into something small and specific. And small, specific things can be dealt with.

Nehemiah 8:10 gave us the armor: “Do not be grieved, for the joy of YHWH is your strength.” The Hebrew word for “strength” here means a stronghold, a fortress, a place of refuge. The word used for joy is only found in one other place in Scripture, in 1 Chronicles 16:27, which reads: “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his place.” Joy isn’t an emotion here, it is a characteristic of YHWH that is felt in His presence. The joy that comes from the presence of YHWH is inherently opposed to chaos. You can’t be in genuine deep joy and in the grip of chaos at the same time. They can’t occupy the same space.

Isaiah 52:7 gives us a stunning picture of this: “How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes Shalom.” This is a declaration about where history is ultimately headed. The proclamation of Shalom is itself the weapon. Shalom, spoken into chaos, functions like light into darkness. Not because of the person speaking it, but because of what Shalom IS.

Day 5 Takeaway

Chaos wins by feeling like everything, everywhere, all at once. Take time today to name your sources of chaos one by one and bring each one before YHWH. Watch something that felt like it was consuming your whole life shrink into something small and specific. And specific things can be dealt with.