Storms

A few weeks ago, we experienced a huge storm. The wind blew, the rain brought flash flood warnings, thunder cracked and shook buildings while lightening split the night sky. I heard none of it. I was sitting in a darkened auditorium completely enthralled with our local high school spring play “Beauty and The Beast.”
 

It started me thinking about how can we insulate ourselves against the storms of life. Storms that include a man in a suit standing in the front of an auditorium telling my co-workers and me our jobs were being eliminated. It’s a storm when one hears the words “the treatment isn’t working and the cancer is growing.” Knowing you will never see your 25-year-old son again is a heart-breaking storm. When you hear “the prognosis is not good.”

 
It’s impossible to keep ourselves as oblivious to life storms as I was to the thunderstorm that swept through our area, but where is our protection? Recently I was reading how God give beauty instead of ashes.

.... to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mouring, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of rightesouness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:3).

You have kept track of every toss and turn through the sleepless nights. Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book. (Psalm 56:8)

Storms of life still hurt, they send us reeling , we are not oblivious to them, but God holds all of those tears and hurts in a bottle and so I hold onto the faith that he will turn those ashes into beauty.