The Threshold of Everything

In the 1950s, British scientists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley inserted tiny electrodes into squid nerve fibers to study how electrical signals travel through the body. What they discovered earned them the Nobel Prize in 1963 — and reveals something profound about what it means to be brave.

Every neuron operates on what scientists call the all-or-nothing principle. A nerve cell receives stimulation — heat, pain, a fingertip's pressure — and builds up electrical charge. When that charge reaches a precise threshold, around negative fifty-five millivolts, something remarkable happens: the neuron fires completely. Not partially. Not cautiously. Completely. It doesn't matter whether the signal barely crossed the threshold or came in overwhelmingly strong — the response is always total.

If the signal doesn't reach that threshold, nothing happens. But the moment it does — everything happens.

Courage works the same way. There is a moment in every hard decision where faith either crosses the line or retreats. Where you step toward the Red Sea or step back. Where you walk into the hospital room, make the phone call, say the word that has needed to be said for years — or you don't.

God isn't asking for fearlessness. He's asking you to reach the threshold. To move past the point of retreat. Because once you cross it — once you commit completely — His power carries the signal the rest of the way. The courage isn't in the distance you travel. It's in the moment you decide to go.