A friend of mine wore a shirt today with an interesting image. It compared God's love to a hurricane, and it was very interesting what image popped into my head. Since I have actually experienced a few hurricanes in my life, I quickly found truth in this statement, which is mostly a matter of perspective.
Like most natural disasters, people typically equate hurricanes with negative denotations. They view it as a problem. For some people, it is actually an opportunity. When I was 14 years old, we traveled to a small town in Georgia that had been hit by a flood after Storm Albert and Beryl I think ripped through the region. The man with whom we ended up working had a positive attitude. Although it meant a lot of work, it was also a chance to start over fresh.
When we let God into our lives, it frequently resembles a hurricane. Perhaps that's why so many people, to paraphrase CS Lewis, do not really desire true nakedness before and partnership with God. He comes in, like a hurricane, to tear down and build anew. In the wake of a disaster we make by virtue of our decisions, he clears away the rubble, salvages the parts that are useful, and then He starts anew to build something new, something better, in the place where the hovel of our lives once stood.
I find it very odd that many of the people hit by hurricane Katrina continue to live in squalor. People struck by other disasters, particularly in areas where it would not help the president's ego to help out like in Joplin MO, have rebuilt and built better than before. Some things were lost; some of the people realized that all they lost were things. What they gained was an opportunity, a perspective, and a personal witness that they can overcome hard things.
One of the reasons God allows bad things to happen to good people is because sometimes you have to start over. When something is damaged beyond repair, it is useful to have a means to end its course along that track. When we fall on hard times, some of us turn to the Lord, and in turning to Him, we become eligible for His help. What He offers is not in stone or steel or specie; He offers the building blocks of the soul- patience, virtue, and faith. Of those humble materials, He makes mighty men by whom He does mighty things.
Beware the temptation to disparage the storm. It may be the means to a new beginning. I know many people have faced troubling times, but if they have led you to have a closer relationship with your Creator and Savior, then they have been valuable. I would not trade the trials of my life for any chance to do it over, because I have come closer to Christ by virtue of the storms of my life, like the apostles who asked Him to calm the storm on Galilee. As I learn to recognize, hearken to, and follow the Savior, I know that a better land awaits, one that He will at least in part build Himself in the ruins of my old life as I become a New Man in Him.
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