One of the great gifts of spending many decades on earth is that after a while, you find yourself muttering under your breath, “I’ve seen this before.” This morning, I received two very different perspectives in my inbox.

One was the announcement (and warning) in the Wall Street Journal that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had led Silicon Valley’s giant companies to tether their fate to his company, creating an enormous conglomerate that was “too big to fail.” Upon reading that, I immediately thought of Enron, Arthur Anderson, the Dot-Com bubble of 2000, the GM bailout, and a host of other times when something that seemed invincible came crashing down. (In Prindle parlance, this means, “I’m not drinking this Kool-Aid!”) I have seen this before.

At the same time, every few months, I see a panic about beef prices, gas prices, or some other panic that makes front-page or lead-story news. But I remember paying $1.27 for gasoline in 1980 (51% less than I paid yesterday to fill up my truck). A rancher sent an assessment of beef prices this week. Cattle prices have tripled since 1990, but during the same period, the stock market has grown 17 times its value in 1990. We either react blindly or we react with perspective.

Each of us chooses where we invest our trust and confidence. Some people trust stock prices, currency valuations, bank interest rates, or job security. All of these will disappoint us at some point in our lives. Some trust military might, political clout, or neighborhood stability. But readiness changes, parties evolve, and neighborhoods usually decline over time. And these patterns are not new.

The Psalmist recorded this perspective centuries ago in Psalm 20 [ESV]:

⁷ Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
⁸ They collapse and fall,
but we rise and stand upright.

Which perspective will you use when the world seems unpredictable, inconsistent, or upside down? Will you zoom out to see the patterns of God’s work in history, or will you practice the daily knee-jerk reactions of our modern culture? And in your own heart, will you trust in HIM?