Lessons Learned
God never wastes an opportunity to instruct us in our
faith. A saying of a wise man found
in Proverbs 24:32, “I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson
from what I saw,” illustrates that fact nicely. God has lessons surrounding us everyday, but unless we take
the time to truly connect God and His promises with the trials, the
distractions, and the miscommunications of our day those teachable moments
simply become stressful moments we must endure.
The disciples were urged by Jesus to get in a boat with Him
and cross over to the other side of a lake. In the midst of their voyage, after Jesus had fallen asleep
a ferocious storm suddenly developed tossing the boat wildly over the
waves. The disciples were in a
panic and feared they would drown. They woke Jesus and accused Him of being
insensitive to their overwhelming situation. Jesus simply stood up and told the storm to quiet down and
it did! Then he confronted the
disciples with a lesson about fear and faith.
I recently took a very long road trip to the other side of
the country. The trip was a very eventful one from Houston to Los Angeles in a
Ford Explorer Sport with my daughter, Sarah, her two surfboards on top, a
bicycle on the back and filled with all her worldly possessions. The goal of
the trip was to find her an apartment and move her things into it before the
next Thursday when we would be flying back to Houston. We set out early one Thursday morning
full of hope and anticipation.
However a few hours into the trip a ferocious storm engulfed us as we
made it to the other side of San Antonio.
The sky grew as black as night, the rain was so heavy that I could not
see but a few feet in front of me.
I decided to pull off the road into a convenience store parking lot in
Comfort, Texas, of all places. We definitely
needed some comfort! I began to
pray for God’s protection as we sat in the parking lot. Looking down at my
phone, I noticed a text from a dear friend saying she was praying Psalm 121:7-8
for us. Interestingly enough,
those were the very verses I had begun memorizing that week! She had no idea of the storm we were in,
but God did, as the verses proclaim, “The Lord will keep you from all harm – he
will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both
now and forevermore.” I saw the
words and tried to connect the promise to the thunderstorm in which I found
myself. My faith was shaky at
best.
We drummed up courage and tried to convince ourselves that
the storm was weakening. However
as we got only a few more miles down the road the wind began to blow so hard that
it was a struggle to keep the car on the road. Sarah made a quick check on her
phone and found that we were not only in an area where there was a severe
thunderstorm warning, but also a tornado warning as well! As I was fluctuating between faith and
fear, my cell phone rang- it was my mom calling. Just a couple of weeks prior to our leaving my mom had
emergency surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her colon. My concentration on driving through a
storm had caused me to briefly forget that my mom would find out that morning
if the cancer had spread. As I answered the phone I braced myself for possible
bad news. To my great relief the
words “The cancer has not spread,” brought peace and calm in the midst of
facing a west Texas thunderstorm. It reminded me of a scripture I have often
prayed, “Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put
to shame, for you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me.” We had rain and wind the rest of that
day until we reach our first day destination: sunny El Paso!
The Lord had watched over our coming and going and brought us safely to
the other side. Another
interesting fact is the meaning of El Paso: “the crossing of the river.”
As I reflect on this first day of travel many God lessons
come to my mind, but one stands out:
When I trust in myself fear engulfs me; when I trust in God’s promise to
watch over me His love covers me and causes the fear to subside. Thank you Lord for calming the storms
physically, emotionally and relationally in my life and for forgiving me of accusing
you of sleeping in the midst of my storms.
“He who watches over you does not slumber!” Psalm 121:3
