I got a ticket for speeding and had to go to traffic school. In the defensive-driving part, they created a scenario: "You're stopped at a stop sign. You look in your rearview mirror and see a car careening toward you that you realize is going to rear-end you. What should you do?"

Almost everybody in the class said you should keep your feet off the brake, so that when that car hits you, you would go forward, absorbing some of the shock.

That was the wrong answer!

We were told: Put your brake on as tight as you can and brace yourself for that collision. If your car is rigid and braced—if it's on its foundation, in other words—then when that horizontal pressure hits, there will be less damage to your car and to the occupants. If your car is not braked, you get the whiplash effect.

I thought to myself, What our Lord has said is that when our lives are anchored into the rock—when we have found his faithfulness and his love, and we have made that the foundation of our life—then we're better able to handle the horizontal pressures of life.