There is a wicked storm brewing...

This morning as I opened my garage door to the world, a green light cast its way inside and I knew before seeing, a storm is brewing here. I hesitated only seconds about my shoe choice today but opted out of a switch (I may just regret it later as I try to run in slightly modified flip flops on wet blacktop).

As I sit and write this, the thunder is booming and the sky is growing darker and darker. It’s one of the uncertainties in life that remind me to breathe…the storms. In Oklahoma, storms come in quickly and may or may not move quickly out. They bring uncertain wind patterns, lightening, thunder, hail, rain, and perhaps large twisting tunnels of doom; aka: tornado. I live only one mile from my parent’s home and I may get 2 inches of rain while they get none.

All of these things are variable and shift quickly from one place to another. Our weather alerts sometimes warn of softball size hail (which I’ve yet to experience in person and hope never to see), and sometimes the reverse is true. A light breeze will become 75 mph wind gusts destroying an entire fence in minutes. The rain can be light almost misting, harder whips of skinny, stinging drops, or torrential downpours with fat drops slapping to flood-like stages.

The tornados, when they come, also represent uncertainty. They may stay grounded for miles and wipe out entire large communities of homes, or they may hop and skip, choosing to spare a neighbors home. I’ve also seen tornados, mere miles in the distance, simply slip back into the wall cloud lurking above.

It’s this uncertainty that reminds me to breathe. It reminds me that I cannot always CONTROL my environment. I may become better at predicting A +B = C, but I will never be able to state with certainty when storms will come, what areas will receive rain, how much damage they will bring, and how long they will linger. This is one of the mysteries God chooses to hold.

My own personal beliefs are that God’s mysteries are here to remind me who is God and who is not. It increases my faith to know that there are things that even the uber-intelligent elite scientists cannot figure out fully. It is good that our God is greater than even the world, because it’s HIS creation.

This is the greatest lesson in life as well. Why do some people receive the ‘brunt’ of God’s storms and others coast along easy waters? Why do bad things happen to good people? I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer this here. We may make guesses and may be partially right about God testing us, or growing us, or refining us through fire, but ultimately we have NO IDEA!

For me, it’s simple...remember to breathe…and remember who gave me the very breath I breathe.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness. And the Spirit of God was hovering over its surface." Genesis 1:1-2

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." Revelation 22:13