Receptivity in the Storm

I suppose my Maine stories will eventually dwindle. Apparently not yet. My friends and I had been gifted with one glorious day after another, but, for me, there was one thing yet lacking as our week drew to a close. I really wanted to see a storm.

I was in the little island village on Friday noon when the wind began to pick up and the islanders began to cast concerned looks at the sky. That was my cue to head back to my cottage atop the rocks at the ocean’s edge.

For the next hour I watched the most remarkable storm blow through. We could see dark fingers of cloud formations reaching toward us from the mainland as the wind picked up. At one point I was standing bare-foot on a rock just below our steps, almost unable to keep my balance as the wind howled around me, and I watched the lighting streak across the horizon.

Eventually I moved indoors as the water, blowing sideways, hit the shingles of our weathered cottage with blinding intensity, and, then, passed on to the other side of the island and out again past the island’s eastern coast to the vast ocean beyond. Within an hour the sun shone again, and rest of the day was bathed in a cool, fresh breeze.

Today I found myself on a much calmer shore, the dunes along Lake Michigan, thinking about that storm and how often the Lord uses storms to crack against the rocks in my own soul and make room for water, and thus life, where nothing but barren land had grown before. Sometimes the storms are very visible, and I join others in hunkering down until the wind has passed. But at other times, the storm is blowing very hard in a corner of my soul that only the Lord can really see. He reaches with fingers not unlike those clouds and finds the rock he wants to crack and the tender seedling struggling to grow up through it. And my job? To stand firm and let the storm blow. For on the other side of my Lord's storms are always refreshing breezes and renewed land. For these I wait in expectation.