Rest in a storm

(UPDATE: I just realized that the nifty little picture I had from the National Hurricane Center was updating itself...great idea...unless, of course, like me you wanted to show just the one shot! Here's the one I meant it to have.)

See that "H" on top of the red border of Texas? The spot where they're expecting the hurricane to hit? Yeah. That's where Cassie is...South Padre Island. She's on her annual trip with our good friends, the Cables. He attends a medical conference and brings along his wife and three boys. Cassie has joined them for the last 3 or 4 years to babysit so they get some alone time and Jill gets help with three amazingly energetic boys!

So...my baby in a hurricane zone...what would you do? Where does your mind go to find rest? How would you sleep at night? How much TV would you watch to track the storm??

I could rest today in the wisdom of Christian Cable to see to their safety...he is an oncologist, after all...a smart, wise man who knows the value of life, loves his family, cares greatly for Cassie. I could trust in the wisdom of those in charge of the evacuations down there. They've been through this before and learned many lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I could even think about Cassie. She's a great young woman, wise in her understanding of situations like this. She's definitely one to look to in a crisis, level headed, can-do personality, caretaker.

But this is futile thinking and will bring no peace. It was never meant to. Weighing the situation to determine the wisest course of action is one thing. Placing my trust in the wisdom of man to alleviate my fears is another. The Bible is clear:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Thinking about situations and weighing options are different than leaning on them...what I can see can not bear my weight. It will not hold me up...especially in my fear. It is one thing to think about the Cables and Cassie. It is another to make what I know my place of rest. God alone will be my rest and He will not give that glory to another. But He's not surprised that I try again and again to turn to others instead of Him for rest and confidence. He told me I would...

For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
In quietness and in trust shall be your strength."
But you were unwilling...
Isaiah 30:15

To know God is to know our only place of rest, of quietness, of trust...but I am often so unwilling. This morning He was gracious to me as He caused me to arise with His Word in my mind. Here's what the Lord reminded me of...

Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther and here shall your proud waves be stayed"?

Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?

Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say, "Here we are"?

Job 38:8-11, 16, 25-27, 34-35

So, I went to His Word and read all of Elihu's words in chapters 36-37 and then kept reading to the end of Job. I needed not understanding of my world and certainly not a better understanding of the storm, but a reminder of who God is. I needed to ask myself: Who is this God I serve? Theology...the study of God...is of no value if it doesn't inform us, change us...especially in our fears.

This doesn't mean that there are not decisions to be made today as Cassie plays on the beach even as I write these words. But it does mean that my perspective of that storm has changed. I feel no fear for my eyes have seen the Lord of Glory and I am undone. By His grace alone, I will not walk according to what I can see, but by faith in the One who made this all to be.