PRAISE YOU IN THE STORM... EVEN WHEN WE FEEL POWERLESS...

TRANSFORMING THURSDAY
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This week, I've been thinking of the different storms I've been in throughout my life. My mind can take me as far back as the age of three. There are storms... and then there are STORMS. Here are a few huge storms that I have been in.

• AGE 3: I was on a ship with my mom from the USA to France. We were in the dining hall when the ship hit extremely rough waters. Dishes, glasses, and silverware all began to fly as people screamed. I CAN STILL SEE THE TERROR ON THEIR FACES as some crawled and others held on to tables. We inched our way back to our cabins in the darkness.
• MIDDLE SCHOOL: I was sitting in class, in Okinawa. It had been storming a lot. The lights began to sway back and forth; flicker on and off. As the class looked on with horror, books and papers began to slide; the teacher lost her balance. WE WERE TERRIFIED! The fact was that we were feeling the aftershocks of the earthquakes in Alaska and tidal waves in the Pacific.
• 1974 - HONEYMOON: On our way back from Colorado to Arkansas in early January, Steve and I went through some really rough weather in the Midwest: snow, sleet, rain, high winds... Eastern Oklahoma and Arkansas had been hit with ice storms. Many places were shut down and powerless. We were poor college students who had just spent our wad on our honeymoon. We inched our way toward Harding College, but after seeing hundreds of cars and trucks off in ditches, we determined to pull off at the next exit. Steve drove into a motel parking lot - full of vehicles. The car began to slip and slide. Steve knew he couldn't put on the brakes or we'd probably hit something. As Steve guided the wheel, I WAS TERRIFIED! We slid around until we stopped at the edge of the empty swimming pool. Once in the lobby, there was literally "no room in the inn". There were people sleeping on the couches, chairs, floors, and even in the stalls in the bathrooms.
• 1976 - STORM ONE: It was March of 1976. Steve was teaching at York College in York, NE. He had been accepted into graduate school at Indiana University for the fall. We'd been watching the Indiana Hoosiers advance in the NCAA basketball tournament since March 13. In Nebraska, on the evening of March 29, 1976, with blizzard conditions outside our house, we watched Indiana play Michigan (in Philadelphia) for the national championship. We never saw the end of the game because the blizzard knocked out the power and we ended up powerless for a week!!! We lived across the street from the girls dorm, where we later heard STORIES OF TERRIFIED YOUNG WOMEN with no flashlights, trying to find their way down the halls and to the restrooms. There has been a book written about the storm that took out Nebraska's power for a week. One of the links I found was HERE .
• 1976 - STORM TWO: It was the summer of 1976, when we went to work in Oklahoma as relief houseparents at Westview Boys' Home. On this particular day, Steve was driving a water truck out through farmlands and I was at his parents' house helping his sisters with cleaning. The storm outside was intense! The winds howled and the rain was heavy. It became eerily dark; there was stillness. We could feel the pressure. In the quiet, water began to pour in around the caulking of the windows. WE HUDDLED, TERRIFIED, in the center of the house. We could only imagine what might be happening outside. Suddenly, the sun came out and the rain stopped. The storm had passed! Stepping out the front door, we found that the huge, decades old tree had been uprooted! There, roaming around the yard, was a herd of cattle that had been across the highway (in a pasture) before the storm. We had just lived through a tornado powerful enough to uproot a giant tree and pick up a herd of cattle!

I'd be here all day if I were to write of the huge physical storms that I have experienced. In many of those storms, we were rendered powerless... without electricity... without light... for a period of time.

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I'd be here for weeks if I were to write of other types of life storms that I have experienced. In many of those storms, I allowed myself to be rendered powerless because I took my eyes off of Jesus. My eyes were on the storm or the darkness for a period of time.

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Yesterday, on this blog, we started our journey of memorizing Romans 5:1-8 by working on verses 1-2. I've written those two again below and then added some key words in the remainder of the 6 verses for you to see the thought process.

"Therefore,

since we have been justified through faith,

we have PEACE with God

through our Lord Jesus Christ,

2 through whom we have gained access by faith

into this GRACE in which we now stand.

And we REJOICE in the HOPE of the glory of God. .

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rejoice in our sufferings...

produces perseverance...

character...

HOPE...

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at just the right time,

when we were still powerless,

Christ died for the ungodly....

While we were still sinners,

Christ died for us."

Feeling powerless? Jesus is our power source! No need to be terrified! We must persevere through the storms... through the suffering. It is a transformational journey!

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If you did not read my Monday post about when the power went out this past Sunday morning during our church service, I encourage you to scroll down and do that now.

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