Outer pressures can cause inner collapse

Most women find themselves in possession of unnumbered spray bottles ranging from perfume spritzers to cleaning products. I counted 6 under my kitchen sink alone.

We view these chemical sprays as tools to help us get specific jobs done, and the contents of most are toxic. That’s why we don’t let young children play with them, despite their pleading.

But a spray bottle filled with clean water? That’s ok. Thanks to the dollar store, Emerald has 6 of them and plays with them almost daily. She lines them up and says, “Train!” Or she’ll sit on the floor, setting them around her in a circle and say, “Ewa is clustering.” [Sidenote: we taught her that word after noticing how she often gathers toys into small groups.]

She’ll tip her bottles sideways and say, “Ni-night.” Or she’ll bounce them up and down: “Bottles jumping!” She plays with them in the bathtub and loves squirting the basement floor, especially if she’s been drawing with chalk beforehand.

Yesterday that’s what she was doing when she suddenly came running. “It’s broken! MeeMee! It’s broken!”

And sure enough, her red bottle was smashed and dented. I wondered how a weakling toddler could inflict such significant damage on a rigid plastic bottle. But then I unscrewed the nozzle and watched as the bottle miraculously straightened out in an instant. It was a perfect illustration of an “implosion.”

To implode means to burst inward, and the eventual result is complete collapse. One dictionary says, “to collapse inward in a violent manner.” Apparently as Emerald had been spraying her bottle, it hadn’t been able to “take in” as much as it had “put out,” and the outside pressure had overwhelmed the inside.

Such an implosion is actually an effective visual for what can happen to us spiritually. All of us have experienced times when trouble seems to come in multiples. No single problem crushes us, but in a “cluster” (to use Emerald’s word) they can cause rapid inward collapse.

How can we avoid “getting dented” when outside pressures become intense? The only way is to breathe in spiritual oxygen in greater volume than we breathe it out. This necessitates being vigilant about what’s going on inside of us and takes a firm resolve to give more attention to that than to what’s happening around us.

It’s helpful to ask, “Am I taking in the strengthening truths of Scripture? Am I asking God to prepare me for whatever’s ahead? Have I routed out self-centeredness and sin to make room for Christ’s righteousness?” If we’re willing to follow the instructions he gives, we’ll be able to stand firm.

As for Emerald’s red bottle, after I loosened the nozzle, it functioned perfectly. And if we’ll just as readily let God fix what’s wrong inside of us, implosion and collapse will never happen.