It was my youngest son’s second day of work. He joined his big brother and I at a nearby grocery store. I work in the pharmacy, and he works up front. He’s the guy who asks if you want paper or plastic then kindly takes your groceries out to your car.
I couldn’t be more proud.
But a couple of Sundays ago, between the wind and the “severe thunderstorm” radio alerts, I couldn’t have been more concerned.
The view from my pharmacy drive thru window only intensified my fears. I saw trees swaying and debris flying like I had never seen before.
Was this a sandstorm, hurricane, tornado? What was this? Then came the rain. It was that crazy, an umbrella is useless, sideways kind of rain.
I literally kept picturing my fifteen year old flying in the air with someone’s grocery cart (think Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz). I needed to stop.
So I took a deep breath and whispered a prayer. If there was anyone who understood storms, it was Jesus. Three of the four gospels tell the story.
After a busy day of preaching to large crowds, Jesus and His disciples took a boat to the opposite shore. “Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was engulfed by the waves.” But Jesus was below deck sleeping. The disciples were terrified and rushed to wake Him.
“Don’t you care?” They asked. “And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ” (Mark 4:39)
Like a kick in the gut, storms are real and come on suddenly. Rain will fall, on the just and the unjust. And Christians get just as wet as the next guy. Just ask my kids…they were drenched!
But I love what Max Lucado says, “Christ-followers contract malaria, bury children, and battle addictions, and, as a result, face fears. It’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It’s whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ.”
As trite and Sunday School sweet as this may sound, it’s the gospel truth. Jesus is still able to speak His peace over any storm we encounter- wind, debris and even crazy sideways rain doesn’t phase our Savior.
My sincere prayer: Whatever the storm, I pray we are blanketed with the peace of God and experience the greatest unexplainable calm we have ever known.
May every trial bring us face to face with our ‘unstirred Savior.’
-Binu
Photo Credit: The Washington Post
