Any Way the Wind Blows

(Photo above taken just after Hurricane Katrina in Pascagoula, MS)

These days you can never tell which way the wind will blow.  It may just bring a tornado to your doorstep.  People in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia found this out the hard way on April 27th.  People in Joplin, Missouri, found this out the hard way on May 22nd.  And in last week’s latest round of tornadic activity even the people in Springfield, Massachusetts, where tornadoes are fairly rare, got a taste of their fury.  Then there is the outbreak in California, also historically a fairly tornado-free area.

So, what is really going on here?  Some would say that it is caused by “global warming” … I wonder if that is why we had the coldest winter on record in quite a while this past year.   Maybe Cheryl ( >>wink<< with her vast study of and fascination with the weather) could help us understand better.  Earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, tornadoes… just what does it all add up to?

(Photo above taken after April 27th tornadoes in Alabama)

If you are like I am, you have been thinking about and pondering  what all this strange weather activity really means.  I think of Jesus’ words when He told us in Matthew 24, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.”  Birth pangs slowly and increasingly get harder and closer together; and so it seems these strange weather patterns are doing.  It is a constant reminder that this earth is not only an unpredictable place and one we will never be able to control with our man-made schemes, neither is it our permanent home.  No matter how hard we try to stay here or how much effort we put into living longer, one fact remains:  no one gets out of this life alive.   And these recent storms are such a vivid reminder that we don’t get to choose when our final day will be.

(Photo above taken after AL tornadoes shot a splintered two-by-four through a picture in a child’s bedroom)

So what can we do with this knowledge?  Well, there are really only two options… we can live with the conviction that Jesus is Lord, that He paid the penalty for our sin, and that He will come back and redeem all those who truly know and love Him.  Or we can choose to ignore Him, living exactly as we please, without regard for His love or sacrifice.  We really must choose, and ignoring His love and sacrifice is really a choice against Him. 

I just can’t buy the fact that this world just “happened” as an accident of the cosmos.  It would take much more of a leap of faith to believe that, than it does for me to look at the magnificently crafted human body, see its intricate design of systems and organs, and believe it must have had an awesome Creator.

(I mean seriously, can you look at that precious face and think it was an accident of nature? I don’t actually know this little fellow, but a friend of mine snapped his picture while on vacation.)

To use a quote that I hear frequently, “I would rather live like there is a God only to find out that there is not, than to live like there is no God only to find that there is (and, I might add, that He is truly not only Creator, but Judge of the universe.)” 

Storms will come…  so what will you do when they come? As for me, I will lift my eyes to the hills and realize again just where my help comes from:  my help comes from the Lord, Creator of heaven and earth.

And as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.