NEWS: Weather Forecast
ALERT: Heavy Rainfall Warning for – insert your town here
Wait a minute… heavy rainfall warning?
Oh please… like we haven’t endured raindrops before.
You know, they’re those little wet round things that plop… pretty sure I first saw those on Bambi.
If they had said hurricanes or flooding then there’d be cause for some warning… I’d even probably be pretty concerned.
But when the weather channel (or weather.ca – in my case) tells you that “heavy rainfall” is on its way… I say, bring it on!
I mean come on! Are we scared of some rain?
What month is it?
Oh right… it’s March.
In Ontario
Rain is welcome here… it’s beautiful, the snow is melting… poor hibernating Canadians (such as myself) start to get that glimmer of hope that spring could be just a month away!
After somehow surviving a long winter of nothing but snow-squalls, white-outs, and flurries (for my friends south of the border, a Canadian flurry is a ton of huge snowflakes falling out of nowhere. Could be sunny one minute, flurries the next. We don’t limit this to McDonald’s.) we see some harmless rain (as long as it’s not freezing) as a chance to relax and believe in miracles again.
BUT…
The weather channel proclaims: HEAVY RAINFALL WARNING!!!
Scary.
Apparently over the course of the next 24 hours we are supposed to get 10-20 millimetres of rain!
Do you know how much a millimetre is?
Yeah. A tenth of a centimetre.
Ooohhh scary.
It’s like this big -
That’s it.
Why are you listening to the weather channel’s scare tactics?
It’s just rain.
I know the guy who created that stuff… he loves me more than his own life. ;)
I was reading earlier today in my homework (shout out to Pastor Paul if you’re reading this! Yes, she does do homework.) about the grace of God giving us power to live out the lives we are meant to live. God has so much planned for us to do in life, but without his grace on our lives and his power working thru us, we can do nothing.
What does this have to do with rain?
Well… let me let you in on a secret.
I’ve just had a highly caffeinated Friday, I’m tired – yet wired, and I’m massively excited cuz my best Nova Scotia
Ok. Back to where I was going with this.
There’s a story where Jesus and his disciples are going across the lake in a boat… massive storm comes up… they didn’t have the weather channel to warn them. Bet there was some heavy rainfall tho.
So the disciples reacted the way any of us would when a storm takes us by surprise (or sometimes we react even when weather.ca makes us fully aware of warnings)…
They were SCARED!
Ok ok… I’m making a little light of it. It was definitely a bigger storm than the 10 millimetres I’m supposed to see tonight.
But the concept of fear can occur to whomever fear wishes to grip its easy targets.
Whether it be tough fishermen, who have seen a storm or two… or a little baby girl, afraid of her first summer thunderstorm.
But… what can we cling to?
What did the disciples seek out during this storm?
They didn’t look to the weather channel and buy in to some scare tactic made up just to intimidate them into giving up.
No. they took their small, trembling faith to the feet of the Master.
“you wake him… no you! … come on, it was your idea! … we’re all gonna drown if we don’t wake him up… how can he sleep at a time like this?”
Finally someone gets up the nerve and pokes Jesus in the ribs.
“Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
Fear… doubt… many things were weighing on these guys minds.
Its like us… when all we can see is storms and opposition, it’s hard to remember that God is in control. It’s hard to see past the “10 millimetres” of impending rain, and believe that HE has a purpose for your life. You may not see it yet, and you may be “of little faith” that His dreams for you are even gonna come true…
But keep looking. The Master has spoken that we are “going to the other side”, and no matter what storms lie in between, he has the strength and power to get us there. If only we will trust that he is who he says he is.
That’s all I have for tonight… going to sleep peacefully with the sound of 10-20 millimetres of rain falling softly on my window, and Jesus watching over my life. J
PS. For the full, unabbreviated story on Jesus calming the storm, read Matthew 8 OR Luke 8.
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