The Shelter in the Storm

The Typhoon Haiyan has already entered history as one of the strongest tropical cyclones in the history of mankind.  

The images of devastation are overwhelming. The loss of lives and earthly possessions incalculable.  The pain numbing.  

The scope, the strength, the duration of the storm unprecedented.

We’ve never seen anything like this.  We never knew anything like this could happen.

But it did.  And it knocked the wind out of our chest, leaving the scattered shards of what life used to be in its wake.

This is a reality check for me.

Humbling is the word that comes to my mind.

It reveals with stunning clarity how fragile we all are.

How vulnerable.

How weak and needy, naked and powerless we are in the face of life’s storms.  You don’t have to live in the Philippines. Or Japan. Or Indonesia. Or New Orleans. For no life is exempt.

It exposes how silly our preoccupation with image and appearances, how laughable our little pompous ways. How illusiatory our thoughts that we can control our destiny. That we can secure our future.  That we can manipulate and run our own lives.

Haiyan might be a once-in-a-history kind of storm.  But we all face storms of life, one kind or another.

Watching the footage, looking at the pictures, remembering the various storms that have battered our own lives over the years, I am reminded again how small we all are.   How desperately in need of shelter and protection, for it’s not a matter of if, but when the next cyclone hits... when the ominous clouds begin to accumulate on my horizon announcing the coming storm...

This is a sobering warning but also a sound invitation from the only One who can help us build our lives on solid foundation:  

Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.  Matthew 7:24-27