How to Be Antifragile

My apologies for missing Friday’s post—our house was actually burglarized on Thursday evening, though later that evening my friend and I actually caught the bad guys! A story for another day. The point is that I didn’t get my post finished.

I preached on Acts 3-4 Sunday, and I’ve included the video below.

[Today’s scripture reading is Acts 4:32-37—a summary statement from Luke about the generosity of the early church toward people in need.]

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How to be Antifragile

Something fragile is hurt by stress and difficultly.

Something ANTIFRAGILE becomes stronger through stress and difficulty.

A candle in the wind is quickly snuffed out;

A fire in the wind gets stronger.

If ever there were a time to learn how to get stronger through difficulty, now is that time.

Now is the time to become ANTIFRAGILE.

The early church in Acts faced great difficulties and it grew because and not in spite of those difficulties.

When Peter and John are arrested, for example, their response to the threats they face is astounding.

(Hint: they don’t ask for the threats to be removed.)

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Sermon Video: “How to Be Antifragile”

Want Antifragile Kids? Make Them Listen to This Kind of Music. [Psalm 129]

Remember, these “Songs of Ascents” are the songs that the Israelite pilgrims would sing as they made their way up to Jerusalem every year for the big festivals. The boy Jesus certainly sang these with his family.

Think about how singing something like this would shape a child for life!

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Something antifragile is something that not only withstands hardship but actually thrives as a result of hardship.

(Americans are not antifragile these days.)

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Psalm 129

A Song of Ascents

1 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth”—
    let Israel now say—
2 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
    yet they have not prevailed against me.
3 The plowers plowed upon my back;
    they made long their furrows.”

So, the Israelites taught their kids to SING that, though they had been sorely oppressed by their enemies— “they plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows”—they were not defeated.

They acknowledge difficulty—they sing about it!—but they all tell themselves they’ve not been defeated.

Can you imagine singing that your whole life? Can you imagine how antifragile that would make you?

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The psalm closes with a defiant statement that God will defeat Israel’s enemies:

4 The Lord is righteous;
    he has cut the cords of the wicked.
5 May all who hate Zion
    be put to shame and turned backward!
6 Let them be like the grass on the housetops,
    which withers before it grows up,
7 with which the reaper does not fill his hand
    nor the binder of sheaves his arms,
8 nor do those who pass by say,
    “The blessing of the Lord be upon you!
    We bless you in the name of the Lord!”

It strikes me that this is EXACTLY the kind of music we need to be singing and memorizing these days.

What do you think?