Windstorm

“For He spoke and raised up a stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.” – Psalm 107:25

“Lord Jesus if there is anything in my life that I am placing before You I pray that you would bring it crumbing down just like You did to the false God Dagon.”

Some years ago I prayed this prayer and went to bed with no idea how quickly God would answer this prayer.

The next morning as I travelled to work in a crew boat to the salmon farm I worked at, I heard Adam, one of my crew members, calling us on radio. After a quick conversation over the radio we learned that, while it was calm where we were, my farm site was in the middle of a storm. One of our work boats was breaking free of her moorings and Adam needed to learn quickly how to start this vessel to keep her from being thrown up on the beach. None of us could understand how it could be rough at the site, while only twenty minutes away where we were it was calm.

Later, when the site came into view, I’ll never forget what I saw. The channel is about five kilometers across but everything was calm except for the area immediately surrounding my farm site. The water and air around the site was white. It was as if a storm like a small hurricane touched down and whipped up the waves into white froth. I’ve seen a lot of storms in my years on the water but I have never seen a storm set itself up like this in such a small area before.

I spent that morning with my crew securing our boats and equipment and afterwards assessing the damage. We saved the work boat thanks mostly to Adam’s quick thinking but the other damage was pretty extensive. A wooden float in behind the farm was broken and ripped in two. A feed shed broke loose when a shackle was stretched open and a metal bracket was torn from it’s side. During the storm it was heaved up onto a six foot diameter steel mooring buoy and the main beams were broken and half of the building collapsed. One inch metal stanchions that the work boat had been tied to were pulled out straight. I’ve never seen a storm concentrate itself like that and I’d never seen a storm in inside waters that destructive, I knew God had answered my prayer.

God had given me this job. He had allowed me to work my way up into management and I thanked Him by pouring my heart into my job. I was putting it ahead of my family and my relationship with God. I’ve never forgotten this lesson and I’m so thankful that He is a jealous God.

There is another lesson that I learned from this storm that I think is just as important. I look back on what was destroyed in that storm and it was all wood hay and stubble. The floats were old wooden floats that were aging and undersized. The house the staff lived in, the steel cages and nets that held our fish and our boats all safely rode out the storm. What God showed me was that as we go through storms, whether they are of the meteorological sort or not He will remove everything that is not profitable. He doesn’t promise that it will be a painless process. In fact it probably will hurt and more than that it may even test the hardness of our faith.

Gethsemane

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest; So shall your poverty come like a prowler, and your need like an armed man. - Proverbs 24:33-34

The night before Jesus was crucified He went into the garden of Gethsemane to pray.

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak", He said to His disciples, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with me".

Do you ever wonder if you would've stayed up through the night and prayed with Him or would you have dozed off to sleep and your comfortable dreams. I've been awake all night before, under high stress and unable to rein in my myriad of anxieties. That happened to me once and I realised then how long a night actually is. I've also dozed off when I should've stayed awake that's the story I'm going to relate now.

Fifteen years ago my wife and I were backpacking across Europe and we had arrived in the town of Dieppe. It was "Bastille Day"

Bastille Day was not in our otherwise handy travel guide and it's the biggest holiday of the year in France. No banks open and every hostel and hotel full. We actually had a room in a hostel from the night before but they couldn't tell us if they had room for us until 5pm the next day.

We waited around until 5 to let them tell us they had no room. Perfect, so we now started on a pointless journey walking from hotel to hotel only to hear how every place was full.

At some point we came to the realisation that we would be sleeping outside that night. Only problem was, and I'm not sure why, but people in Dieppe don't like you crashing in random places in their town and we didn't want to spend the night outside the relative safety of the streetlights. We decided we would buy a dinner we could eat late on the beach, stay up as late as possible and then take turns sleeping on a bench at the train station.

Dinner was good, we hung out and wandered around town as long as possible and then we walked over to the train station and sat down under the pretense that we were waiting for a train.

The attendant would come over as each train arrived and ask us if this was our train and we'd shake our heads no.

I gallantly took the first turn sleeping.

My wife woke me up when it was her turn to sleep and I groggily came to. I started my watch with the best of intentions but I was so tired. My eyes were heavy, I was constantly rubber-necking and there was nothing to do. I guess I kept waking her up by doing the little things that probably seemed innocuous to a person who's awake but make it difficult for a person to sleep. Or worse, I would ask, "Is it my turn to sleep yet".

She finally woke up and let me sleep. I didn't argue.

Dr Phil says "history is the best predictor of future performance" so I guess if I was in the situation Jesus' disciples were in I'd probably sleep too. My wife thinks if Jesus' disciples were women they would've stayed up and prayed with Him. We'll never know but it's probably a strong hypothesis.

Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. - Mark 14:41

The face of love

What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention - Job 7:17

LORD, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that You think of him? Man is like a mere breath; His days are like a passing shadow. - Psalm 144:3-4

I started reading a book called "Crazy Love" it's about how amazing God's love for us is. The first chapter highlights the reality of how infinitely small we are even in terms of a physical universe. Some scientists say the universe is finite but unbounded . In other words there is an absolute limit to the amount of stars, planets and matter in existence but the universe is expanding into a unlimited space-time continuum. Expanding or not it's massive and we're small.

Click on this link and then videos and then "Awe factor" http://crazylovebook.com/ to see a video demonstrating just how small we are.

Let's assume for a moment that the universe is only as big as our telescopes can see, hundreds of millions of light years. Even if we assume it's limited to that size, we are so incredibly small in comparison. If we were to try to put that in relative terms on earth, we would be like a microvirus, on a bacteria, on a flea, on a dog, on a continent, on the earth. I can't imagine even the nicest, most sympathetic PETA card-carrying individual even caring for a flea let alone the microvirus. That would be crazy. And yet that's kind of similar to God caring for us.

I've seen Your face on stained glass, in coloured lights
In pictures of You looking to the sky
You've been portrayed a thousand different ways
But my heart can see You better than my eyes
'Cause it's love that paints the portrait of Your life
- The face of love