Riding Out The Storm

"And he huffed, and he puffed, and he blew the house down."

This week, weather permitting, we are going camping for one night. I say "weather permitting" because when we did this trip last year we spent the night inside a tent while a ferocious thunderstorm raged around us. Wind, rain, thunder and lightning. The whole works, seemingly dialed up to "11." We might have left, except for the fact that we dared not go out into that weather until it passed by, and when it did there wasn't a really reason to leave. We may have been a bit damp, but it was relatively tolerable inside the tent.

When we awoke in the morning and took a look around camp, everyone else seemed to have survived just fine. Not just the group of people camping with us, but everyone else from town who was camping out at that time. Because the occasion was a particular tribal festival there were, literally, several thousand people in the general area. Some traveled back-and-forth to town, but many others came ready to stay for all four days of the festival.

Accommodations varied. Nylon tents like ours. Army-style canvas tents. Campers. Tipis. Lots and lots of tipis. But, as best I could tell, everything was standing. Nothing had been blown down or washed away.

The memory of last year's trip came to mind as I read from Second Corinthians this morning. 2 Corinthians 5:1 says:

"For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

The picture attached to  this post is from the parsonage we live in, which is probably the most solid house I have ever called home. It was built in 1914 from adobe, and the walls are about one foot thick, with 8 inches of that being solid adobe brick. If we had been inside our house during last year's storm my reaction would probably have been one of thinking "quite a storm out tonight" before quickly going back to sleep. We live in a solid house, one that offers considerably more protection in dangerous weather than our tent does, but which still could fail in the "right" circumstances. But God offers to all a dwelling that will never be destroyed.

Human life is fragile and transient, subject to all manner of things that might threaten to bring it to harm. Illness, accident, old age. None of us are immune. For each of us the day will come when our life will end. We may see it approaching and be able to take action to put if off a bit, such as feeling something wrong in our body, seeing a doctor, and finding out that we have a bad, but treatable, cancer. And so we take the cure and continue on for a time. Or the end may come in a completely unexpected way. An incident or accident that could neither be anticipated or avoided.

In writing the Corinthians, Paul reminds them, or perhaps teaches them, that in the transient nature of human life, God offers eternal security. Life can be like a storm sometimes. A storm that may seem to have no end.  Life will huff, and sometimes puff with a force we never thought possible. And yet, even if it takes away every material thing we own, even if it takes away our very life on this earth, we who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will never be taken from him. Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.