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A story of a storm in my life:
We all have those moments in life that we will never forget. You know the ones: where you can seem to recount every detail no matter how far it was in the past.
One of those events for me was during my junior year of high school.
It was a warm spring day in Littleton, Colorado. I was a student at Arapahoe High School, sitting in a class as I watched our vice principal keep nervously walk past the door.
It became a game to me—counting how many times he passed. Five, six, seven… running his hands through his hair. Eight, nine, ten… He looked more worried than he usually did. I tracked his fly-bys with little tick marks on my notebook paper.
thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fourteen.
he stopped.
It was as if he finally found the words he was searching to find. Suddenly, he burst into our classroom. I remember his statements exactly:
“There’s been a shooting at Columbine High School,” he said.
He had tears and terror in his eyes.
Columbine was four miles from where I was sitting. The kids at Columbine were all our neighbors, kids we played with on our community sports teams, kids we went to elementary school with. Our schools had a huge, good-hearted soccer rivalry. Nearly everyone in my class knew someone at Columbine.
All around me in class kids started crying. My school immediately went into lockdown mode where no one could get in or out of the building. Our principal came on the loudspeaker and gave more details. Soon we all retreated downstairs and all the students filed into the cafeteria where teachers were setting up a row of TV monitors. Outside, I could see a long line of parents’ cars beginning to rush to our school.
That day was one of the fear-filled days of my life. Not to mention the hours, weeks and months of sorting out thoughts and facts that were still to be discovered.
The one thing that I have learned about life is that we are inevitably going to encounter storms – hard times that toss us to-and-fro and seemed insurmountable. In Mark 4:35 we can read about a real storm that Jesus and the disciples faced one night on the sea of Galilee…
You may be going through a hard time right now, but why are you so afraid? God will never leave you or forsake you. He promised! God always keeps His promises.
Does it sometimes seem like God is hiding or that our prayers don’t go any farther than the ceiling? It does for me too, but that is where faith is required.
It has been said many times before: facts drive faith, not feelings. The facts are found in the pages of Gods Word. Let’s build our faith on these facts and not flimsy feelings-of-the-moment; with Christ in our boat and His Word as our sure planks, we will be able to make it through the turbulent trials of life.
