A Ramble about the Storm

I'm sitting in my bed with my laptop perched on my lap trying to remember all those things I had wanted to write a ramble about, and the truth is that I'm drawing a blank as I sit here. It's probably stress and exhaustion. We've had a pretty tough few weeks, and both my wife and I are beginning to feel the strain. We feel (at least I know I feel) caught in a huge storm of actions, reactions, hopes, fears, and circumstances that feels a little like a hurricane bearing down on us right now. In the middle of all of this, the Lord has been providing for us when by all rights we should have been blown away by the forces at work.

It's really easy to look at the storm and be afraid. Hurricanes do a tremendous amount of damage, whether they're literal hurricanes, spiritual, emotional, financial, or physical, or some combination of all or any of the above. The come on slowly, and all you can do is sit and wait, and try to prepare to ride them out in some kind of a safe shelter or refuge. If you've survived through the eye and come out the other side, you then have to assess the damage and see if rebuilding is either necessary, possible, or both. Sometimes it's possible, sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on, hard as it may be.

The storm swirling around us right now doesn't seem to want to let up in any reasonable amount of time (at least to me). The temptation is there to go to the door, open it, and just peek out at the storm to see if it's getting any lighter. Problem is, the minute you open the door and look at the storm, the storm invites itself in and tries to drag you out into it. No, the best thing is to stay put in your place of refuge until you're given the all clear.

It's easy for me to look at our circumstances swirling around us. It's easy for me to look at things I've done or others have done and react in anger or guilt. It's easy for me to take a possible future and blow it all out of proportion as our only lifeline. It's far, far too easy for me to try and open the door to check on the storm, and this is when I make it worse, not better.

Thing about storms is that they can actually be of a great benefit to the environment. They bring rain to water the ground. What we call firestorms here in Southern California, as deadly and as fierce as they can be also tends to burn out all the dead brush which lays there and collects. Storms tend to come in and destroy what human beings have built up. Funny thing about what human beings often build, is that these constructions often destroy the natural environment and surrounding habitats. It destroys the things we've worked so hard to build up, the things which we become attached to, the things which so often build up like dead brush and cause ruin in our own lives. Storms come in and start the process of renewal by first destroying everything in their paths.

Our refuge, our place of hope and safety is in the Lord Himself. It's not in what we have built for ourselves. It's not in some possible future, or some past event. It's right here, right now, in Him. In the scriptures, Peter walked on water during a terrible windstorm on the Sea of Galilee by keeping his eyes on Jesus the whole time. It was only when he started looking at the storm that he began to sink. Our place of refuge from the storm has to be something which the storm cannot destroy, and that place of refuge is Jesus Christ. Remaining in Him as He told us to do. When we're given the all clear, everything we built may be gone, but we will still remain safe in our refuge.