God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge! [Psalm 46:1-3 (NLT)]
The damage done by Hurricane Harvey seemed unbelievable until Irma hammered the entire state of Florida. Fortunately, our Florida home was prepared and we were safely situated in the Midwest during Irma’s tirade. Would that all the storms of life announced themselves a week in advance to give us time to put up storm shutters and evacuate to safety.
Unfortunately, most of life’s storms are more like tornadoes and hit with little or no warning. Yesterday, sixteen years after 9/11, we were again reminded how unpredictable and precarious life can be. Plywood, sand bags, flashlights, batteries, generators, and stores of fuel, water, and canned goods are of no use when a plane crashes into a building, a spouse has a disabling stroke, a car careens into a crowd, or a stray bullet hits. Addiction, Alzheimer’s, job loss, divorce, cancer, mental illness or a drunken driver don’t warn us before wreaking havoc with our lives. We cannot escape from life’s tempests and trials and they can be far more destructive than any hurricane with its accompanying storm surge.
Someone asked if I had a digital record of our property and another if I was worried about losing anything. Possessions were the least of my concerns; “It’s just stuff!” was my response. We did our best to protect our Florida home and belongings but they are things. I can’t take them with me at the end so, if I lose them now, what difference does it really make? Perhaps I’m being cavalier; it’s our second home so, even if everything is destroyed, I still have a place to rest my head. Nevertheless, although most of those affected have only one home, the same holds true for us all; it really is just stuff. Eventually, power will be restored and homes and businesses will be rebuilt; life goes on.
The question about what I didn’t want to lose got me wondering about my answer—if not house and possessions, to what am I attached? The answer is my faith and relationships, neither of which can be insured or replaced. In the last few days I’ve heard from friends far and near, checking on us and offering their help. These are people who already have more than enough on their plates and yet they offered us both moral support and helping hands. I would mourn losing relationships like those far more than anything in my houses. As for my faith, I’d like to think it will take more than a hurricane or even a terrorist attack to topple it.
Our Florida home was built to withstand a hurricane and should have survived the storm’s onslaught; I don’t yet know. The more important question is whether my faith and relationships can survive the sort of pounding that Irma inflicted on Florida. Are they strong enough to survive gale force winds? Rather than taking pictures of stuff, shuttering the windows or putting furniture up on blocks, what am I doing to reinforce and protect both my faith and relationships to make sure they survive whatever storms come my way?
Heavenly Father, thank you for keeping us strong during life’s storms. Let your written word and the Spirit’s voice bolster us when we start to waver in the wind. Thank you for the gift of friends and family—the people who love and strengthen us so we can survive the squalls, challenges, and losses of our troubled world. Help us be the kind of friends who can be counted on to encourage, reinforce and sustain those around us.
Our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies reminded me of a hiking trip I took there with my daughter more than twenty years ago. With two guides for our group, one acted as lead and tied orange ribbons along the trail to mark the way. Knowing that we are to leave nothing in the forest but footprints, a second guide (the sweep) followed the last hiker and removed the trail markers. That morning’s hike was a trek up to a mountainside teahouse and my daughter and I (both fast walkers) wanted to have time at the top to explore. Confident we couldn’t get lost, we shot ahead of the guide, promising to meet at the teahouse. Apparently, there was a fork in the trail we missed in our haste; we veered left when we should have stayed right. After a while, it occurred to us that we seemed to be going down when the trail should be going up. Nevertheless, expecting an uphill just around the next turn and unwilling to admit we may have erred, we continued down. When we arrived at the same lake from which we’d started, we saw the error of our ways, turned around, and made the hike back uphill. By the time we reached the main trail, the trail markers placed by the lead guide had already been removed by the sweep. Knowing we needed to go further uphill, we continued our trek and eventually rejoined our group at the teahouse. In our case, the first really were the last and we barely had enough time to eat lunch before starting back down the mountain.
It rained last night. During our early morning walk, we looked out over the prairie and saw hundreds of sparkling spider webs. As the morning sun caught the water droplets on the silk, the master weavers’ work glistened in the mist. Although we take that trail several times a week, it was the first time this season we saw those arachnidan works of art. The spiders didn’t start spinning just the previous night; their webs have been there all summer but weather and light conditions kept us from seeing them. In fact, had we chosen to walk the loop in the other direction, we never would have seen them at all!
A few nights ago, I had some unwelcome visitors—worry and anger—and they wouldn’t let me sleep. I responded to their visit with prayer and yet it seemed God had closed His office for the night. We’d just received an accusatory and demanding “do this or else” letter from an attorney and my prayers had been as accusing and vindictive as was the letter. No wonder God turned a deaf ear to them.
As I viewed the picturesque waterfall, the tremendous amount of water pouring over the rock, and the deep gorge formed by the glacial river, I thought of H. Jackson Brown’s quote: “In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength but by perseverance.” Thinking it a good start for a devotion about patience and determination, I looked forward to writing it when I got home. Having been out of town thirty out of the last seventy days, however, I’ve been playing “catch-up” since returning from Canada. Domestic chores, family obligations, paper work, commitments, appointments, assorted health issues, and then my mother-in-law’s hospitalization have eaten away at me and I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. Today, during prayers, it occurred to me that something else is as persistent (and effective) as that rushing water—Satan! While the enemy enjoys throwing major disasters our way, as he did with Job, he also likes to peck at us like a troublesome woodpecker or whittle away at us as water does to rock. Through persistence, water defeats rock; like that persistent water, the enemy is determined to defeat us.
All they did was sin even more, rebel in the desert against the High God. They tried to get their own way with God, clamored for favors, for special attention. They whined like spoiled children, “Why can’t God give us a decent meal in this desert? Sure, he struck the rock and the water flowed, creeks cascaded from the rock. But how about some fresh-baked bread? How about a nice cut of meat?” [Psalm 78:17-20 (MSG)]
Devotions of the Heart 