I’m writing this at somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 feet over beautiful Colorado and headed further west. And I’m writing this from a thankful vantage point because our plane has just poked through the clouds and there’s nothing but clear blue skies in front of me.

Now I don’t travel as much as some people, but I’ve been on enough airplanes and experienced enough bumps to know that the most common solution when you encounter some kind of turbulence on an aircraft, no matter where you are, is usually pretty simple:

Climb.

Point the nose upward and increase your elevation. That’s what we just got finished doing as we were being thrown around and jostled back and forth above the Rocky Mountains. The pilot pulled back on the steering wheel and we started to rise. Soon we were in the midst of the clouds and I couldn’t see out my window at all. We kept climbing. Then there was the occasional light from above. We climbed more and more. And then finally we burst through.

We climbed to peace.

Interestingly, I can now look below us and see what we came through. Clouds of different shapes and sizes, some white and wispy, others dark and more menacing. The turbulence is still there, but we are now above it, looking down on what we were once in the middle of.

So now, because my laptop is open, and since I’m writing about it, I wonder if there’s a formula there that can be duplicated. Maybe it goes something like this:

When in the midst of turbulence, climb upward to peace.

That rings a little bit, don’t you think? Though it probably doesn’t quite sing as much as this: “So if you have been raised with the Messiah, seek what is above, where the Messiah is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on what is above, not on what is on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God. When the Messiah, who is yourlife, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).

Yeah. I’m with it now. Set the course of your heart upward. Set the gaze of your mind beyond. That, of course, is not the end of the story for us. It’s right after this, in verse 5, that Paul continues and says, “Put to death, therefore…” That “putting to death” is the hard, continual work of believing in the power of God that has freed you from sin and death. When you climb, there’s still work to do, so setting your heart and mind to climb upward isn’t the end; but it’s certainly the beginning.

What is the first step when you face the turbulence of sin? Of suffering? Of difficulty or circumstance? Of the menacing clouds of this life?

It’s to climb upward.