After the Storm

We were driving home from visiting the grandparents near Kingfisher, Oklahoma. The countryside between Kingfisher and Okeene, where I was pastor at the time, was so flat that our four small children made a game of seeing who could spot the red stoplight in Okeene first. We were more that ten miles out when I heard one of them call out from the back seat of our station wagon.

“I see Okeene!!”

As we approached the turnoff that would take us north and home I looked west and saw that the little town of Hitchcock, less than a quarter of a mile away, was completely covered in a thick black cloud that went from the sky to the ground. I turned north and turned on the radio as I remarked, “Looks like they are really getting it in Hitchcock.”

A few miles down the road the radio announced that there was a report of a tornado on the ground at Hitchcock, Oklahoma, and there were damage reports coming in. There were no serious injuries. It was not much of a town before the tornado. I realized that we had seen a tornado but I did not know what I was looking at as I drove by it. There was no funnel, just a big black cloud that I learned later was a wall cloud and the tornado was inside it.

Recently we spent another evening watching the weather and making sure we had everything important in the closet in the middle of the house. Tornadoes have been devastating to many areas this year. Several of them have been close to us both physically and emotionally.

We spent many years doing our shopping in Joplin, Missouri. As they called out the streets and businesses that were destroyed we thought about the last time we saw them. I spent many hours visiting church members at St. Johns Hospital. I have been in nearly every part of that hospital at different times. Just down the road from them is Freeman Hospital, the other major medical facility in Joplin. We need to pray for them also as they took as many of the patients as they could from St. Johns, as did many other hospitals in Missouri and Arkansas.

Tornadoes are natural events over which we have no control. In fact, there is little in life that we can really control to the extent that we would like. The Bible does not promise control or complete protection from such things. God’s word promise peace and restoration. He promises that there is something better later.

The hedge of God surrounded Job and yet he went through events that cost him everything. In the middle of it all Job said, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” (esv) In the end Job was blessed far more than at his beginning. That is the promise of God that we can put our trust in.
Bro. Robin