What did the penguin say during Judo?

My good friend Drew is in a Judo class here at WSU. He loves it. He constantly talks about how he could flip me over and put me in a life ending choke. I tell him he couldn’t—he probably could though.

Today Drew randomly started saying the word “Kiai” (pronounced key-eye). After hearing it a hundred times I suddenly realized I had no clue what the heck he was talking about. He explained to me that Kiai is the yell that one shouts during a martial arts match. He explained that it was actually a lot more than simply getting your adrenaline pumping. Kiai is a focusing and a releasing of air; without it the intensity of a fight causes a person to hold their breath and pressure is sustained internally—the result of which is not only diminished fighting ability but also an intense headache from the pressure.

Life often feels like a fight, an intense battle. We find ourselves in situations that feel like we’ve been put in a headlock and we’re holding our breaths desperately trying to escape. But luckily we’ve been given a kiai, we have a reason to shout: Jesus. Praise is not something to be done in only the happy moments of our lives, but in the most desperate times as well. Half the psalms are songs written in times of deep distress. Psalm 22 begins a cry from David, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In Romans 8:26 we are encouraged that when times are tough “…the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

So life sometimes seems like a Judo match, and one we’re losing at that. But we know that, “The one who loves us [Jesus Christ] gives us an overwhelming victory in all these difficulties” (Romans 8:37). So we save ourselves from a headache… we yell, we shout, we scream, dance, praise, and proclaim the glory of the one who is saving us.