Monday, May 2, 2011

God Could Vanish the Storm

As I'm sure you've seen on the news, Baptist Country has been pelted with storms over the last few weeks.

It seems every other day I see a facebook update from my sister (ten hours from here) that they're in the bathroom for another tornado warning.

Last week we were supposed to get really bad storms during the wee morning hours.  Unlike at my sister's college, my school doesn't have a good tornado plan.  That made me nervous.

I was checking the doppler to see what we should be expecting over night.  The storm covered the whole map.  It was more colorful than a sunset.  Yellow, red, green...

When I hit "play" to watch the storms roll over the bed where I wanted to be catching some zzzzz, something went wrong.  The entire storm vanished, leaving just the map.  The map was perfectly clear.

"I could do that, you know," God whispered in my ear.

I thought about it for about and realized how cool it would be if God did make the storm disappear.  He's done it before.

Later in the evening, I went out on the porch for some quiet time with God before I went to bed.  It was beautiful!  The pre-storm weather where the sky's getting dark and the wind is picking up, but there's no real storm yet.

When I came back later, Allyson and Nikki had two videos for me to watch.

Nikki's video was a terrifying video of one of the 150 tornadoes from the same storm.

Allyson's video was an updated doppler.  The green band of storms headed for our town had stopped moving.  The bands following it broke apart and dodged our town.  The first band disintegrated.  Nothing was going to hit us.

God had vanished our storm!

We got the beautiful pre-storm weather but no actual storm.  Sometimes I wish life were like that.  I'd be willing to take this beautiful pre-storm weather that is no real post-graduation plans as long as I knew that the actual storm of planlessness would vanish and a plan would appear. 

He could do that, you know.

And maybe He will.  But still I'm fretting.

I've seen God's faithfulness in the midst of storms.  Literal weather storms and figurative life storms.  Why am I having such a hard time trusting Him amidst this pre-storm chaos of a plan-less post graduation?

<>< Katie

PS: For some reason I do not understand, God decided against vanishing the storms elsewhere in the country.  Friends, our brothers and sisters are hurting.  Their worlds have, quite literally, been turned upside down.  There are organizations such as Samaritan's Purse on the ground helping to pick up the pieces; if you are able, please offer your help as well.  If you are not able, definitely be in prayer!

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