Last night, while I plugged away at a proposal, a weather report broke into the normal television programming to tell us that our area had been placed under a tornado warning. At least one tornado had been spotted.
I was actually reading a bedtime story to our son at the time. My wife called me out of his room to inform me of the situation. We spent the next 3 hours in the basement. Fortunately, I was able to continue to work on my proposal on my laptop while we were down there and Kim and David watched cartoons online on her laptop. It's a good thing we installed that wireless router last year.
It was actually kind of fun, although we'll all be pretty tired today—especially David.
But this gave us an opportunity to teach. David was concerned about our safety. So we discussed the fact that God is in total control and that nothing will happen unless he commands it to happen. David wanted to know if God might want us to die if a tornado hit our house. So we discussed that this was a possibility, but that if God wanted us to die we wouldn't be safe anywhere and then we would be in heaven with God, so that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Then David wanted to know why God made tornadoes. Kim explained that perhaps it was to show us his power and to remind us that we are not in full control and must cling to him for our safety.
It was a good time. And apparently God did not want us to die. We got some rain and some thunder, but our house is still standing. In fact, I doubt that we even lost any roof tiles.
C.H. Spurgeon, in Daily Help said:
We do not observe God's hand as much as we should. Our good puritan forefathers, when it rained, used to say that God had unstopped the bottles of heaven. When it rains nowadays, we think the clouds have become condensed. If they had a field of hay cut, they used to plead to the Lord that He would bid the sun to shine. We, perhaps, are wiser as we think, and we consider it hardly worthwhile to pray about such things, thinking they will come in the course of nature. They believed that God was in every storm, in every cloud of dust. They used to speak of a present God in everything.
Last night provided us the opportunity to "speak of a present God" in the storm. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him, indeed, Richard. We had a scary night in Fredericksburg, too. I can think of nothing BUT the power of almight God when the wind and rain and lightning are scourging our hosue and woods. We were spared, thankfully. Peggy
ReplyDeletePeggy - I heard that there was a 1.8 earthquake in Northern Virginia this past week too - on Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. Did you feel it?
ReplyDeleteNo, I did not. I hadn't even heard we had an earthquake. I experienced a 5.something quake in California many years ago when we lived in Monterey, and I hope never to repeat that. It was scary. Peggy
ReplyDeleteIn China there's breaking news of an earthquake in central China that has so far claimed 5000 lives, including many young students who were killed as their school buildings collapsed on them.
ReplyDeleteIn our area we were at a bank last week and heard the emergency broadcast system talk of a tornado sighting about 10 miles from where we were. We were west of it, and it was headed north, so we were not in its path, but these occurrences are fairly frequent around here during these months.
My parents saw the news about the tornadoes in Virginia (they live in Florida) and said that they are glad that they live in hurricane country rather than tornado country, since hurricanes are predictable and you get a warning ahead of time. I reminded them that Virginia is not tornado country either.
ReplyDeleteGod is in control and he moves the wind where he wants. We all need to make sure we're ready for whatever he has planned. It can be scary at times, but he is our solid rock.
I think the most infuriating thing in these weather stories is how the government of Myanmar is behaving after those devastating cyclones.
ReplyDeleteI agree that God is in control, but it is crazymaking to read of help not getting to the victims, or else getting there from other countries, but the government put their name on the packages before sending them out.
I agree, Lynn. The way I take this is as a motivation to evangelism. These people desperately need Christ. It is quite sad to hear these stories though.
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