The Storm Matters
Scene: It’s raining.
And by raining, I mean the skies over Arizona are hurling one hydrogen and two oxygens toward the earth at a 200-degree angle, and the wind is blowing at approximately 85 mph (an illegal speed in an automobile, and quite possibly an exaggerated numerical value). Thunder more resonant than ASU’s Lupe Fiasco/Jason Derulo concert last night just made me cower into the fetal position, and I’m still convinced that the rain is going to break my bedroom window.
STORY: Since it’s my last night in AZ, I strolled over to my window to watch the storm unfold. After my eyes adjusted to the view of water streaming down glass, I watched in horror as the plants in my backyard were furiously abused by the wind and rain. My initial reaction was “Oh sh**… the trees are going to snap in half and fall over any second….”, I was reminded of a chorus we used to sing at NW:
“I want to be unmovable, unshakeable. Let my roots go down deep. Unmovable, unshakeable in You. And I, I want to be like a tree planted by the streams of living water.”
I decided I want to stand strong in God as the trees in my backyard stand strong in their roots: swaying, but never unearthed by the wind and rain.
Further into my muse, branches begin to break from the tree, and fall to the ground to die. I thought perhaps, in a metaphorical sense, trees are replicas of ourselves as human beings – each is designed so intricately and individually by God… and as much as I want to believe, trees are not completely invincible. Sometimes the sun shines, and we grow. Sometimes the sun shines too much, followed by a drought, and we wither.
And sometimes God pours down a storm upon us. It’s brutal, and there is pain. Parts of us are broken off, and we lose those branches forever; they fall to the ground to die. But maybe, just maybe, those branches we lose are saplings – detrimental growths, habits, or people - that prevent us from growing upward… upward toward the heavens and toward our Heavenly Father.
Maybe the storms in our lives are necessary to cast off hindrances and enable ourselves to grow closer to God. Time to go play in the rain. =)
