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People stand among homes devastated by fire, high wind, and pounding
rains. An elderly woman is carried over flood waters by a firefighter. A
flooded parking lot is full of taxi cabs in Hoboken. Twenty-eight people are
dead.
What’s our response to this?
Certainly we need to work as if everything depended on us.
We need to roll up our sleeves and fill sandbags, and climb power poles, and
shelter people displaced by the storm.
But there’s more, something deeper.
Last night about 3 a.m. my 4-year-old son came into our
bedroom and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Daddy,” he said, “I had a bad dream.”
"Daddy,” he said, “I had a bad dream.”
I rose, like parents do the world over, and carried him back
to bed. I tucked him in, kissed him on the forehead, then whispered in his ear
the same words I recite whenever my kids have a bad dream: the first portion of
Psalm 46.
God is our refuge and
strength.
An ever-present help
in trouble.
Therefore we will not
fear.
Think about that last line.
We will not fear.
I need to remind myself of that truth on a regular basis.
How about you?
Here’s fact. The storms of life happen to us all. If you’re
not battling some sort of storm right now, chances are you will be soon.
In response to these storms, we work like everything depends
on us. But we’re also invited to trust like everything depends on God. That’s
faith, not fear.
And faith can quiet any heart—no matter what the age—when
you awake from a nightmare at 3 a.m.
Faith, not fear.
Faith, not fear.
Faith, not fear.
Drum those words--and the greater concept behind them--into your head, again and again.
Faith … not fear.
Question: how do you battle the storms of life?
4 comments:
I think that when storms come I spend too much time telling myself "I'm afraid" and not telling myself "you can walk into this because He is with you". He is our refuge especially during the hardest downpours, strongest winds, volcanic activity, blowing snow type storms of our lives. I wrote in my journal one terrible day, "the storm has overtaken us". It felt true enough, but the reality was that my storm was a rescue, I just didn't know it yet. Thanks Marcus.
A good thought all around. Thank you.
Marcus, so good, thank you for this encouragement today.
Marcus: I had to read this 3 times and think before I typed my response. We recently missed church for four weeks due to my wife's illnesses and we really enjoyed church on the fifth Sunday.
Religion and prayer is a huge help, but I read everynight after turning off the tv. Sometimes I turn off the lights, when finished reading, and just relax and sometimes think of tomorrow of future days. I am fortunate to have a great wife to talk with including the Cubs.
Gary
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