Stealer of Storms

Sometimes my Monday Messages are hard to come by. Sometimes I pray and read, and read and pray, and it takes me a great deal of time throughout the week to decipher what it is that the Lord would have me say. Then sometimes, they write themselves, and God makes it so abundantly clear. To be fair, I think He is always clear and consistent. It is my own brain that tends to fog things up.

A few weeks ago, we were preparing for an ice storm. It was supposed to be significant, and we were supposed lose power. I didn’t realize how much of our preparing was being absorbed by our 3-year old daughter until she became very scared of this “ice cream storm,” as I will now and forever refer to them, because that makes it sound so much more fun.

It never amounted to much, and we never lost power, but then last week, we were again talking in front of sweet Charlotte about a thunder storm we were expecting. She became extra concerned and so distraught that she couldn’t seem to eat her dinner. She was afraid that this storm would enter our home. In an effort to calm her, my husband told her, “Storms don’t have thumbs. They can’t open our door.” This seemed to work. She repeated this several times, as if trying to soothe herself.

“But storms have ears!” she exclaimed, as though that was fact, and a good indicator of the severity of the storm. She became very upset again.

My husband quickly said, “Charlotte, can you open the door with your ears? After dinner, I want you to try to open the door with your ear, and see if it opens.”

 

She thought about this very seriously for a minute, and then agreed that ears can’t open doors. Then, upon her own realization, she proclaimed, “But God stole the storms! God steals the storms from us!” 

Do you have storms you need to hand over to God? Storms in your life you need to allow Him to take from you? He is waiting. The chapter of Psalms is believed to have been written when the Israelites were allowed to return to their homeland from their Babylonian captivity. To read it all, we come to understand that some of their storms were self inflicted. Some of the stress in our lives could have been avoided had we listened to God’s whispers to begin with. But He waits. He waits in the stillness for us to listen. He waits in the storms for our cries. When we rely on Him and Him alone, He can take those storms from us. That is not to say that he will restore our lives to perfection (which they never were to begin with), but He will bring peace, the antithesis of the storm, to your heart, your life, your storm. He will steal that raging storm within you, and replace it with faith, if you only ask. 

Not every day, but some days, when I put Charlotte down for her nap, she still talks about the storm, she acts scared, as though she does not want to be left alone, and then she asks one simple question, “Mommy, can you pray to Jesus for me?”

In a very simple prayer, asking God to take away her fear, and keep her safe, she smiles, says, “Thank you, Jesus,” and closes her eyes.

That is a child-like faith. That is the faith we are capable of if we simply allow God to take our storms. And what He replaces it with, is far greater than anything we could imagine…