Storms Brewing

We have had some storm fronts come through in the past couple of weeks that could not be ignored. These are the types of storms in which you open your front door and the door practically gets ripped from your hands. The wind is forceful enough that tree branches fall, people get pushed around and when driving you have to counteract the force of the winds as they hit your car. Now I am not talking hurricane force winds like what the south and eastern seaboards get, but they are still something to pay attention to. Our storms bring in the rain/snow and if we are “lucky” enough we will get the below freezing temperatures afterwards that make what just fell solid and slick. Once again something to pay attention to, and yet it seems as though some of us still do not.

As I was driving home from a client’s house during one of these storms, traffic started to slow down near a curve in the road near the lake. As we were slowly driving the cause of the delay became apparent when the flashing lights came into view. Now luckily these were the lights of a tow truck but the problem it faced was still magnificent. There on the side of the road in a ditch was a semi truck upside down. The trailer of the truck was full of bags of onions which had been tossed and turned as the truck was rolled over. The cab of the truck was strong enough to keep the driver safe (I read later in the paper) but the cause of the rollover looked as if the combination of the winds being strong and the speed of the truck high enough that truck itself couldn’t withstand the force. A misjudgment that could not be overlooked as the expertise of the tow truck drivers was used to get the semi-truck righted and brought into town.

High winds and strong storms should cause us to hunker down and be more cautious, but sometimes we let what we have experience in the past, and what we know of our abilities to overcome storms cloud our judgements. We hear the warnings, we look to our weather apps, but yet we still wear shorts, and complain about being cold. This coming week the church that my family and I attend will be doing a week of fasting. In the past I have gone without food for a week and grew a lot in my ability to trust that God gives strength and that He is in control. This time it will be a different type of fast that I need to do, because what I need to fast from is not food but more what I allow my eyes to feast upon. Over the last few years I have seen what social media and the internet can do, based on what I allow myself and my family to get drawn into. I admit that my ability to always monitor what my kids see is not great, and because of that, what they see as their world view has been hand fed to them by the people they love to watch. Do you see the storm brewing? My husband and I have allowed the same to happen with us and how we see the world. How did something as free as the internet bind us so well with chains?

We did not heed to the warnings. We let the fact that we have time on our hands and boredom abounding drag us to the one thing that can be mind numbing. So this coming week is a week of fasting from social media and the internet as much as can be done, based on what I need to use for work. Just as with fasting from food, there is a withdrawal period. But this is where the strength of my faith comes into play. The first thing I pray will happen is that I will be humbled. Struggling with “figuring it out myself” is huge. Dismissing help from others because “they just don’t get it” is huge. Christ was the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords. He chose to be humbled and to become man. When we let our world views, our lifestyles and our thoughts separate us from Christ we are not going to find peace or joy. As humbling as this is God does not need us to praise Him. Think about this, even if we chose to stop praising him, nature itself will cry out.

Think about this too: How sad it would be, how sad our lives would be if we missed Jesus because of ourselves. When we don’t like what He means in our lives, or when we don’t like what we hear, we miss HIM! He chooses how He comes in our lives and sometimes it’s in the still, small whisper. Sometimes it’s in the roar of the wind. He alone knows how to get our attention, but when we make our worlds so loud with noise, we can’t hear Him, even if He is banging on our door. When we feel alone, when we feel as if the storms in our lives are too strong for us to handle, this is when we need to humble ourselves and see that we either made Christ too small or we perceive our problems to be too big for Him. Until next time:

You don’t have to be powerful, or forceful in order to get what you want. The Grand Canyon was not formed in a day. It was formed over time by a river that just flowed. Force was not used, but rather the steady stream of water with time.

We need to be steadfast in our faith, and over time the sharp edges of our hearts will turn smooth, and our faith will be our strength.

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