A Derecho Is Coming Soon To Your Neighborhood

The first week of July, we had the occasion to experience a “derecho” in two different locations.  No, it is not a new fast food chain, but a sudden destructive storm featuring gale-force winds.   Also known as an inland hurricane, the extremely-high straight line winds strike fiercely, uprooting hundred-year-old trees and twisting branches off healthy young trees as easily as shucking corn.  It is also often accompanied by the words:  “What in the world was that?”

We had just returned from hiking with our two grandbabies on a beautiful hot sunny day.  Home for just 15 minutes, pulling together the children’s supper, it suddenly became so dark outside I had to turn on the lights.  And then it hit.  It appeared that full-grown trees were swaying to the music of the howling wind.  Afraid of branches falling on our vehicle, my husband headed outside to move the car.  He walked out the door and right back in.  “I’m not going out in THAT,” he said.  It lasted only a few minutes, and other than a few branches down in the yard and the creek looking like a wild ride at an amusement park,  no damage occurred.  We were without power for 12 hours;  others lost it for days, and trees littered the roadway and yards like the aftermath of a wild party.

Unlike a real hurricane or even a severe thunderstorm, a derecho can strike almost without warning. That is not unlike the calamities of life, those difficulties that elude your radar and hit always at the most inconvenient times.   “I didn’t see that coming.”  A battery-operated headlamp and a gallon of fresh water can get you through a power-outage.  Keeping deadwood trimmed can eliminate some of the damage.  But spiritually, we seem to forget to do anything to prepare for what may lie ahead.  The trees that went down were the ones that had not learned to flex and snapback.  There was nothing to hold them down, their root systems wide and shallow.

Daily reading in God’s Word and prayer are strengths built into your soul, equipping you for what you can’t forecast.  And through them, you learn to trust God in everything, even when you are surrounded by turbulence and there is nothing you can do, but pray and know “even the sea and the wind obey Him.”  God is in control even in the midst of your storm.

Get to where nothing throws you.  Not in a sense of blind ignorance or callous indifference, but in knowing God, sensitive to His leading, aware of His Presence, and used for His purposes.