Today is National Situational Awareness Day. It is intended to call attention to the need to be aware of our surroundings and potential dangers. We are living in an age where people enter schools, churches, shopping malls, and stores like Walmart with one intention – kill as many people as they possibly can.
“In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2025, a U.S. citizen from Texas named Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people. Jabbar was inspired by the Islamic State, making the incident the deadliest jihadist attack in the United States since the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. To better understand attacks like Jabbar’s, CSIS compiled a dataset of 740 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States between January 1, 1994, and January 1, 2025, 140 of which were jihadist attacks and plots.”1
The U.S. Government Accountability office reports that “Domestic terrorism is on the rise. Several attacks have been widely reported in the last few years.”2
We cannot live our lives in fear. However, we cannot afford to walk around unaware of our surroundings. We must have situational awareness. We need to be able to spot things that aren’t right or seem amiss.
U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper developed a color-coded system of awareness and presented this in his book Principles of Personal Defense. The USMC adds the final color.
- In condition Whiteyou are unprepared and unready to take lethal action. If you are attacked in White you will probably die unless your adversary is totally inept.
- In condition Yellowyou bring yourself to the understanding that your life may be in danger and that you may have to do something about it.
- In condition Orangeyou have determined upon a specific adversary and are prepared to take action which may result in his death, but you are not in a lethal mode.
- In condition Redyou are in a lethal mode and will shoot if circumstances warrant.
- In condition Black you are in active combat and a lot of bad things are happening around you.3 To put it in our vernacular, “it’s going down.”
We should be constantly in condition yellow, looking for danger and knowing what we will do if something happens. That is situational awareness – being aware of your
surroundings. Too many people, though, live in the oblivious state of condition white, unaware of what’s happening around them and insensitive to potential danger.
Many Christians live this way as well. 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation…” The Lord wants us to be situationally aware of Satan’s ploys.
In the Old Testament, we are given a great example in 1 Chronicles 12:32. “And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment.” They weren’t walking around in condition white. These were yellow and even orange guys.
After September 11, 2001, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority developed a slogan that was trademarked. If you see something, say something. In 2010, they gifted the rights of this slogan to the Department of Homeland Security. We won’t see anything, though, unless we are aware and understanding of the times in which we live. This is true physically and it is true spiritually.
If your awareness is a bit dull and as white as a sheet of paper, it’s time to get some color in your life. Your physical life and all involved in your life need this. And you need it spiritually as well.
1 Thessalonians 5:6 admonishes, “Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.”
1https://www.csis.org/analysis/jihadist-terrorism-united-states
2https://www.gao.gov/blog/rising-threat-domestic-terrorism-u.s.-and-federal-efforts-combat-it
3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper
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