The weather report

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but if you live in mine, you're wet! It's been raining a lot lately. The weather has taken it's toll on our area in many different ways. Over the last few weeks we've experienced tornados that have destroyed many homes in our community. We've expereinced a lot of rain and flooding. Gardens are usually put in by now, but many folks have yet to be able to get their gardens in the ground because it's been so wet. Today we had another storm come through our area and as I was watching the radar screen on my computor I was saw warning idicaters showing me that we were in a severe Thunderstorm warning for our area. I decided to put a loop action on this map so I could observe the behavior of this storm and see where it had been and watch it move accross the screen to where it was now. This loop shows me about an hours worth of storm movement in just a few seconds time. What I noticed was as the storm moved through the state, the yellow boxes that indicate severe thunderstorm warnings would pop up as the storm moved. I also noticed that about 100 hundred miles after the storm had passed there were green boxes popping up on the screen indictaing flash flood warnings for those areas that had just experienced the severe weather. Watching this map and seeing these storms build up and then hit us followed quickly by flash floods, well it reminded me of how similar the weather is to our own lives.

We face storms all the time don't we? They suddnely come into our lives, often without any warning, and they hit us hard. Some storms can be destructive, like tornados, while other storms just make us uncomfortable, like Thunderstorms or rain, but as with any storm that brings a lot of rain, there's usually flash flooding to follow. It's like a double whammy.

I don't know what storms you are going through, I don't know what flash floods you have experienced from the storms you've endured either. All I know is that God does. His word promises comfort during the storms of our lives.

Psalm 107:26-29
(26) Their souls melt because of trouble.
(27) They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end.
(28) Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distresses.
(29) He calms the storm, so that it's waves are still.

If the weather has any similarity to the personal storms we experience in our own lives then there's good news. Storms always pass through! Some storms are worse than others but they don't last forever and the sun will shine again. We just need to learn to protect ourselves during these storms. God is our protection, He is our shelter, and with him we can and will endure the storms we encounter and flash floods that follow. May we all remember to cry out to the Lord in our distress and allow Him to calm the storm.