Storm Preparation
The force of the wind was so loud and compelling to watch from our windows that we could think of nothing else until it stopped. We stood for four hours in the dim daylight and watched as the landscape outside changed forever. When it stopped, we emerged from the house in shock. The hundred-year-old trees from the original home place were gone. The carefully designed yard, my husband’s pride and joy, bedraggled, pitted and filled with trash. Our garage door had blown from the frame. All roads in and out were blocked by ancient trees. Acres of pine plantings looked like pick up sticks thrown from a child’s toy tin. The initial shock of the devastation gave way to a determined and grim reality; it would take a long time to restore utilities and clean up the roads to get out in the aftermath, but I had prepared.
I had washed the galvanized tubs I use to wash harvested vegetables and filled them with water for bathing and flushing. I had filled a dozen gallon jugs with clean drinking water. I had shopped for non-perishable food and snacks. I had consolidated all my frozen harvest into one freezer so that we could use a generator to save it. We had gas, batteries and paper goods. Monday and Tuesday’s preparations had been exhausting. But on Wednesday evening I was glad. In the weeks since Michael, we’ve heard terrible stories of the unprepared, the careless and the stubborn. There was no excuse. Meteorologists forecast Michael a week ahead, and Florida residents know hurricanes change as they approach. No one in the grocery stores or gas stations spoke of anything else in the days before landfall.
So it is with the storms that come to our lives. Preparation is the key. In Luke 12, Jesus spent a great deal of time encouraging us to be watchful. “Be dressed ready for service and keeps your lamps burning. like men waiting for their master to return…It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready … But understand this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You must also be ready because the Son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him” (selections from verses 35-40). In February I went to my local nurse practitioner with what I thought was a kidney stone. By evening I was getting rolled into surgery for an appendectomy. I wasn’t afraid because I have confidence in the Master of storms. I made my storm preparations for life and death many decades ago and it is okay. Whatever comes my way, I know God will see me through it or take me to be with Him. Storms come and we don’t have time to get prayed through. We must be ready. Have you prepared? You’re facing too much on your own if you haven’t. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Oh Father God, I ask for wisdom to prepare for the storms ahead. I thank you that you have promised us safety in your arms. I commit my way to you.
