Spring is for warmer days, longer light, budding trees, and...storms! As a young child, I remember being terrified of storms. The winds, lightning, thunder, and hail made me a nervous wreck. The sound of a severe storm warning siren would send me running to the basement where I would huddle in a corner. Thankfully, a storm no longer strikes the same kind of terror in me because...
For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.—Psalm 135:5-7
As a child, I wish I had had these truths spoken into my life. A foundation of God's providence over nature serves as a sure stronghold for enduring the storms that come our way. To that end, here is a short story from Noel Piper that you could share and talk about with your children and students:
Hiding from God's Storm
We huddled together in the dark bathroom. Just the day before yesterday we had been playing on the beach. But yesterday, when we had gone out again, we couldn’t play. We had to run right back to the house, because the sand was like miniature shotgun pellets aimed at our faces, legs, and arms. We could imagine what a sandstorm in the Sahara might be like.
Now today, we were hiding from a full-fledged hurricane. When the rain had gotten so hard we couldn’t see the edge of the yard, and the trees were bending almost to the ground, and the electricity was out, we followed the instructions we heard from the battery-operated radio, “Find an inside room. Stay away from windows, in case of shattering glass.” It was sort of cozy and exciting, sitting close together in the flashlight shadows, hearing the wind howling outside and listening to radio reports about the effects of the storm all over the city.
Suddenly, there was a thunderous crack, and then the house shook like an earthquake. We couldn’t go out of our hiding place to see what had happened, but we were all okay. Okay, yes. But not feeling so cozy and excited anymore. Now, I began to pray seriously. That crash had reminded me that God was in control of this situation. I couldn’t just take it for granted that if I followed all the “safety rules,” then everything was guaranteed safe. God was blowing this storm, and God was shaking this house. God was holding us in His hand, and He would decide whether our bathroom hiding place was “safe.”
Afterward, we found a 10-story-high pine tree broken and fallen onto a corner of the house. I imagined God snapping it as easily as I might break a pencil. And if God had dropped the top of the tree 20 feet farther over, it would have smashed the roof right over our bathroom hiding place.
The hurricane was God’s. And the tree was His, and it fell where He dropped it. And our hiding place from God’s nature was not the bathroom, but God Himself.
(Story from in the Growing in Faith Together Page for
Lesson 13 of the My Purpose Will Stand curriculum.)Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.—Psalm 57:1
The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.—Proverbs 18:10
