The War Waging Inside You While You Rest

When bacterial pneumonia invades your lungs, your doctor gives deceptively simple orders: stay in bed, drink fluids, be still.

But still does not mean nothing is happening.

Deep inside your chest, an army mobilizes with staggering precision. Neutrophils arrive within minutes, swarming the bacteria like first responders to a five-alarm fire. Macrophages engulf invaders whole, dissolving them with enzymes. T-cells coordinate targeted strikes with the sophistication of a military command center. Your fever — that miserable, bone-rattling heat — is your body deliberately raising its temperature to make the environment hostile to the enemy.

A full-scale war rages inside you. And your only job is to lie there and let it happen.

This is exactly what Moses told the Israelites at the edge of the Red Sea. The dust cloud of Pharaoh's chariots rose behind them. The impossible water stretched before them. Every instinct screamed: run, fight, do something.

But Moses said, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."

God was not asking for passivity. He was asking for trust — the kind of trust a fevered patient places in the unseen battle being fought on their behalf. The Almighty was already moving, already marshaling forces, already parting waters they could not yet see.

Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is stop thrashing and let God be God.