You know how conversations go when you meet someone for the first time. First, there is a period of chit-chat. Then, inevitably, there is a conversation about the weather. There is plenty of talk about the weather in the San Joaquin Valley. Once more, we are talking about an atmospheric river that will cause flooding and potential destruction.
In Bolivia, I experienced one of the scariest fierce storms of my life. A group of us were camping in tents at the edge of a jungle town. In the night, our sleep was shattered by a massive thunderstorm. It flashed, cracked, roared, boomed, shook the earth for more than 30 minutes, and poured enormous water. Every hair on my body stood up on its end from fright and static electricity in the air. I heard lightning hit the ground but yards away. I yelled at my tent mate, “Are you awake?” “Yes,” he yelled back, “And I’m on my knees praying.” That made two of us.
In the morning, we discovered flooded streets, shaken inhabitants, a wall of an adobe house fallen over, and a dead cow killed by lightning but yards away.
This morning I read this text, Isa 25:4, “You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm.” As I was meditating on this text, other storms flooded my mind: physical and emotional, relational, mental, and spiritual storms. I am so glad I have a Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is a “shelter in the time storm.”