Tag: Shelter

Shelter in the Storm, Part II

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“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1, NASB)

With my husband’s Saturday chores and projects for the day finished, I spotted my opportunity.  I could leave my home and run errands by myself.  Yes, that meant no children along for the ride or little people to shuttle in and out of stores.  No behavior to monitor or lectures to be given.  No looking at products we don’t need costing money I don’t have and saying  “no” to children who declare they need them.  No driving in the car and reaching over to turn the music down or off every 30 seconds so I could answer a question or solve a sibling dispute.

I could feel the tension in me, in my voice, in my reactions, in the speed at which I was cleaning the house and grumbling (Didn’t I just clean this?  How many times do I put these things away every day?  Why are there shoes on the floor again and why are they in the middle of the floor? Who walks 4 feet into a room and then decides to take their shoes off?).  A birthday party had brought new, exciting, wonderful gifts into our home, gifts that were now being played with all over the floor that I had just cleared of toys the night before.

It had been too long since I had left my home by myself.  And so, off I went, list in hand showing what I needed to accomplish.  I went to the first store, used my coupon, bought my necessary items, checked it off my list.  So far, so good.  A little overcast, a slight misting in the air, the wind blowing my hair in my eyes periodically, but nothing too troubling.

Back in my car, I flicked on the radio to my favorite classical music station.  Sometimes without children along, I enjoy music without words.  Expecting Bach, I heard instead hillbilly rock ( I think).  Whatever it was, it was thoroughly un-relaxing.  Confused, I scanned through the stations.  My music had disappeared and been replaced with what the DJ announced was the “best music in the universe.”  I was doubtful.  I was also now whining and fretting.  What happened to my radio station?  Was it an interruption caused by the stormy weather on the way or was this a long-term travesty not just ruining my day, but ruining my future, as well?

On I drove.  My spirit rumbling, grumbling, complaining and whining now.  I spotted a McDonald’s and was inspired.  A large sweet tea for $1 would certainly improve my day and so I ordered and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Twelve minutes later, they had finally served the person in front of me and I pulled up to the window where a cheerfully apologetic woman handed me the drink that took all of 10 seconds to fix and said, “Sorry for your wait.”  I smiled weakly and drove away.

The rumbling in my spirit grew.  My wonderful, precious, much-anticipated time out was not refreshing or relaxing or productive.  It was ruined by inconvenience and disappointment and impatience.

The sky seemed darker now than before.  On the radio, the DJ for the mystery music station announced that in Virginia they were calling for severe thunderstorms, hail and maybe tornadoes.  She didn’t say when any of this might happen.  She didn’t even tell me where in Virginia this might occur.  So, this new radio station has yucky music and unhelpful DJ’s.  Just great.

I whined some more.

And then I felt it, a heaviness on my heart, a deep impression that I could not shake—-it was not okay for me to drive across the bridge and finish my errands across the river.  I needed to stay in my tiny town, do what I could here and go home.  I grumbled to God that this was my only opportunity to complete these errands unaccompanied, that my upcoming weekly calendar was covered from edge-to-edge with things I needed to do and places I needed to be.  If I didn’t go now, I wouldn’t get to go all week.  I wanted to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.

I complained.  The sky was deep gray now.  Turning my car around, I drove away from the bridge and finished the errands I could do in town–obeying, but not cheerfully obeying.

Arriving home, I fixed dinner and watched my daughters play with my husband.  The power flickered off and on.  It rained.

Then, the news came in, pictures, videos, Facebook posts, phone calls to see if we were okay.   A tornado had touched down just miles away, hitting the connecting road to our street.  The middle school had an entire wing destroyed.  Frames of homes had been lifted up and mangled around trees.  Our hospital’s emergency room was crowded to overflowing and people were sent across the river for care.  People were missing, a few dead.  The only hotel in town filled up with families now homeless.

The book of Job describes a man battling his own life-storm–the death of his children and servants, the loss of his livestock and livelihood, and the personal pain of boils on his skin. For almost the entire book, Job and his “friends” talk and talk and talk some more about God.  And then God shows up in person: “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1, NASB).  God spoke to Job through the tornado—perhaps knowing that was the only to make these “talking heads” be quiet.  Sometimes God needs to use a raging storm to get our attention and to stop our incessant personal noise and natural bent toward self-centeredness.

After God spoke, Job did the wisest thing a man could do.  He said, “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth” (Job 40:4, NIV).  And that is what I did in the aftermath of the storm.  I stood silent.  Hadn’t I just whined because my radio station was missing, because I had to wait for a drink, because I didn’t get to go where I wanted to go, and yet just miles away a family now had no home?  Sometimes it takes a whirlwind to put things into perspective, to remind me once again that inconvenience from without and impatience from within have too much power over the attitudes of my heart. 

It’s a matter of my misplaced focus.  At times, I begin to look only at me, me, me and the things I want and need, and Jesus Christ is no longer the center of my life.  Selfishness is at the heart of my whining and complaining about minor annoyances and trivialities.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the center is opened to it.”

It’s a discipline of choosing God over self that takes effort and vigilance.  So, daily we must choose to place and replace Christ at the center of our lives, letting Him have full reign over our circumstances and our heart’s responses to them.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

Shelter in the Storm, Part I

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In my small group last week, a beautifully wise lady reminded us that we can’t always see God at work.  He saves us in so many hidden ways, doing things we may never appreciate until we look through our life with a heavenly view.  It’s like the times we were running late and a car accident happened right where we would have been had we been on time.  It’s an invisible hand of grace.

Certainly sometimes God protects us even when we do not know we are in danger.  So it was for many of us in my small town this week.  The day after a tornado hit, a friend posted on her blog, “What tornado?”  Her power had gone out and she hadn’t even known the cause until a friend called to see if she was safe.

It was the same for us.  A split-second loss of power was our only impact from a whirlwind that wreaked havoc on homes, churches and a school just a few miles away.  Others we knew had been watching constant broadcasts on the local news channel and still others huddled under doorways and in bathrooms with laptops and cell phones, trying to stay safe and informed.  We, on the other hand, went about our Saturday night business, eating dinner, giving the girls baths, reading, relaxing and preparing for church the next day.  We were oblivious to even the possibility of a storm, and so we didn’t even know at first that God was keeping us safe.

So often, we miss seeing how God is at work in our lives because we aren’t bothering to look.  The storm demanded our attention, though.  Suddenly, we heard story after story of protection and deliverance.  A car that usually is parked where a tree crashed down, but for some reason people decided at the last minute to drive the car instead of the truck.  A former home totally destroyed down to its foundation.  Trees crashing through the roofs of houses in just the right spot, narrowly missing the people sitting just a few feet away—unharmed and untouched.  A school destroyed on a Saturday night, thankfully empty of the students and teachers there five other days of the week.  Churches similarly empty of people when their roofs were peeled off by the wind, empty because the storm didn’t happen on a Sunday.

We tell the stories and shake our heads as we are astonished by grace and overwhelmed by mercy.

We notice His grace and mercy because of the storm, but God is at work in our lives every day and we’re just generally too busy to stop and see. In her book One in a Million, Prisiclla Shirer reminds us to “practice watchfulness” and to take deliberate pauses in the midst of our daily and our everyday so that we can look for God’s activity.  If we want to see God, really and truly see Him at work, we need to be on the look-out for what He is doing in the quiet and mundane days just as much as in the storm.

God called the Israelites to this stance of watchfulness in Exodus 14:13 in the midst of a storm of their own.  The Hebrews were terrified of the Egyptian chariots barreling through the wilderness in their direction while the Israelites stood trapped–Pharaoh’s army on one side, Red Sea on the other. “Moses spoke to the people: ‘Don’t be afraid. Stand firm and watch God do his work of salvation for you today. Take a good look at the Egyptians today for you’re never going to see them again'” (Exodus 14:13, MSG).  The people were told to watch, just watch.  Be on the lookout for what God is going to do.  Keep your eyes open to how He’s going to save you.  Don’t turn your head or avert your gaze or you’ll miss out on a God-sighting and the chance to see Him at work.

So, I wonder—how can I be watchful for God’s activity not just when I’m trapped at the Red Sea or in the middle of a storm and crying out to God for help?  In her book, One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp determines not to miss out on God in the smallest pieces of her busy days.  She takes on a challenge, to list one thousand things she’s thankful for.  Without paragraphs of description or pages of explanation, she simply writes one-line prayers of gratitude to God.  It changes her life.  Her whole way of viewing the world is now new, passed through a filter that specifically seeks out the invisible hand of God, now made visible simply because she took the time to see it.

A friend and I read this book together.  I gulped it down, reading it in two days.  Most of the time, I found I was holding my breath as I read because I was so focused on the challenge to my heart too often cluttered with whining and complaining.   And then at the end, my friend and I decided we would make a list.  We would go to one thousand, too.

My list sits beside me now. On it, I have written “shelter in the storm even when we didn’t know we needed it.”  It’s thankfulness in the big things of life, in the the evident deliverance—like Israel crossing the Red Sea to safety while the Egyptian army drowned in the waves.

Also on my list, though:

  • Hugs from a baby in footy pajamas.
  • Fresh journals with clean, unwritten pages.
  • Homemade bread with butter all melted on top.
  • Mornings with nowhere to rush off to.

Some days I forget to deliberately pause and be watchful for God.  My list remains untouched on my table or in my bag from morning to night, but I am trying and learning to stop moving for just a brief moment a few times a day and look around, really look.  Because God isn’t just present in the storms—that’s only where we most often search for Him and that’s when His activity is most noticeable.  But He’s also in the mundane and everyday moments in my life and I will see Him there if I only take the time to quiet my heart and open my eyes in watchful anticipation.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King

Kaleidoscope Moment

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“Surely, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.  The Lord, the Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation”
Isaiah 12:2-3, NIV

Imagine you’re on Jeopardy in a close match with your two co-contestants.  You choose your next category and see the Double Jeopardy sign.  This is your chance!  You can “risk it all, Alex” and go for a true Double Jeopardy, thereby leaving your opponents impossibly behind when you answer correctly.   Or, you can play it safe, and risk only a minor amount; you wouldn’t gain much, but you wouldn’t lose much either.

What would you do?  Are you a risk-taker or a play-it-safe kind of person?

I know what I would do.  I’d wager about $200 and pinch myself later if I knew the answer to the question.  That’s one reason you’ll never see me on Jeopardy.  That and the fact I know almost nothing about sports, pop culture,  geography and tons of other things.  Oh, and I freeze up under pressure.  I’m not really Jeopardy champion material.

Since I’m not a risk-taker, it frightens me when God asks me to take bold steps of faith and follow Him in obedience as we travel into the unknown.  It’s too . . . well, risky!  What if I get lost?  What if I don’t survive?  What if I heard God wrong?  What if I get embarrassed?  What if God doesn’t provide?  What if I’m not successful?

This is one of those “kaleidescope moments” in our faith walk.  These classic toys seem almost magical at times.  You hold a simple tube up to the light and the mosaic of colors inside shines and flashes in a beautiful pattern.  With one simple twist, the colors fall into a new pattern—still beautiful, but now so very different.

God sometimes needs to give our perspective a little twist, so that we see from His eyes.   The new pattern will be beautiful and oh so very different from what we’ve seen before.

Even when God calls us out into the unknown, even when He asks us to stop playing it safe, even when He asks us to follow obediently before the plan is revealed, even when He asks us to do something that sounds crazy, even when He asks us to do something different than everyone around us . . . even then, there really isn’t anything risky about following God.  That’s because no matter where God takes us, He walks by our side and His promises remain true.

We don’t have to take a risk.  Instead, we can enjoy what Kay Arthur calls “the rest of faith,” when we unite “the Word of God with faith for a particular situation.”   Psalm 91 promises us that “those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1, NIV).   That’s a shift in our perspective; a new way to look at God’s call on our lives.

Paul demonstrated this rest of faith while he was a prisoner on a ship at sea that was caught in a terrible storm.  “The next day, as gale-force winds continued to batter the ship, the crew began throwing the cargo overboard. The following day they even took some of the ship’s gear and threw it overboard.  The terrible storm raged for many days, blotting out the sun and the stars, until at last all hope was gone” (Acts 27:19-20, NIV).

Everyone had lost hope–except Paul.  He rested in faith.  God had told Paul previously that he would travel to Rome and preach Christ there.  No storm could prevent God from fulfilling His promise.  That night on the ship, God reconfirmed His plan by sending an angel who said “‘Don’t be afraid, Paul, for you will surely stand trial before Caesar!  What’s more, God in his goodness has granted safety to everyone sailing with you.”  Paul announced to those on the ship, “So take courage!  For I believe God.  It will be just as he said” (Acts 27: 24-25, NIV).

Even with these assurances from Paul, the sailors were frightened and tried to abandon ship.  Wouldn’t you?

When Paul confronted them and said, “You will all die unless the sailors stay aboard,” they amazingly listened to his assurances and “cut the ropes to the lifeboat and let it drift away.”  Later, Paul told these men who had not eaten for two weeks, to eat and strengthen themselves.   Scripture tells us, “Everyone was encouraged and began to eat” and then, in a true display of faith, “the crew lightened the ship further by throwing the cargo of wheat overboard” (Acts 27:30-37).

Paul’s confident faith was infectious.  The sailors were now without a lifeboat as an escape plan and without any food provisions to count on for the future.   All they had was God’s promise that they would be okay.

The good news is that God’s promises are enough.  Everyone on that ship survived the storm and made it safely to land just as God had said.

Like Paul, we have promises that we can rest in even when life seems risky.  We don’t need lifeboats or cargo to guarantee our safety through a storm.  God promises that He will go with us and never abandon us.  He promises to shelter us and set us high above our enemies.  He promises to provide for our needs and to give us all-sufficient grace.  He promises to strengthen us and renew us day by day.

These promises mean that life for those with faith is never really risky.  Instead, with a simple shift in our kaleidoscope and change in our perspective, God can help us experience the rest of faith by connecting His promises with our situation.  Then, we will “trust and not be afraid” (Isaiah 12:2, NIV).

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King