When the Storm Comes...

Today is stormy inside my heart, tears well up over silly things. That’s the clue, time to sit with the Lord for his counsel I suppose. My feet drag, I haven’t liked his answers lately. A lover’s quarrel, still I listen.

I bring all my brokenness and ask again, why? Why do I have to take inventory after the theft and be left with the empty holes that glare at me, where the pretty things were?

His voice comforts me in the sadness. The storm comes and takes with it anything that isn’t tied down. Does that mean I had to tie it down or that I didn’t tie it down? Or is it that it takes with it that which was not necessary? Some things seem so indispensable, don’t they?

He shows me the landscape charred and smoking after the fire has purged the forest. What good can come from these ashes? Yet as I step through the blackened soil, my boots catching on smoldering stumps, I know new life is just below the dying brush. The wind came through and took with it everything that wasn’t tied down, the fire raged and burned all that was left.

And deep below the surface seeds are opening that will sprout soon.

Hope in the midst of loss is always present. New life belies and lessens death. What was before will come again, changed, renewed, different. For now I survey this darkened field and mourn the loss of life and limb. Tomorrow will bring a brighter day and I will see the beginning of a new forest that has been growing secretly, readying for birth.

My tears fall on fallow field watering the future.