storms – Aspirational Adventures

This is what has been going on in my house over this weekend as Wales get battered by Storm Darragh.

Compared to many places across the globe the UK gets off lightly with extremes of weather. Oh we get weather and don’t we Brits like to talk about it. Even if you have nothing to say to anyone as you pass in the street you can always say things like “nice day” “bit cloudy/windy/rainy/sunny” “bit cold/hot/wet/dry” “its come early for winter/spring/summer/autumn” Always a something and generally a disgruntled something.

Well for the first time I think we’ve had a red weather warning. Our local Victorian pier is breaking up with the battering it is getting. Trees are coming down. Roads are blocked. Electricity is down. Christmas markets are cancelled and we’ll all be late doing our Christmas shopping!!!

But it isn’t like some places even in America where twisters and floodings and fires are becoming a thing. I was amazed at the lack of news about the fire in Ventura, California, which happened during the US elections. I only knew about it because one of the houses destroyed belonged to friends. I wonder how many other environmental disasters there are that we never hear about?

Yes environmental disasters! Because that is what this extreme weather is – an environmental disaster brought on by climate change.

I would say this isn’t normal but I think it is going to become the new normal. But also it is to be expected.

⁶You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸All these are the beginning of birth pains.

⁹“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. ¹⁰At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, ¹¹and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. ¹²Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, ¹³but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Matthew 26:6-13

Ok so it doesn’t mention floods and uncontrolled fires and extremes of weather, etc, but that sort of thing does appear in poetic form in the Book of Revelations later in the Bible. Worth a read as you look at these global weather phenomenons.

I’ve been doing some pondering around being a Christian, Jesus, and the whole suffering thing – encouraged by a friend last night as we were driving home. She was saying about trusting God in the storm [we were driving back from a concert as Storm Darragh was approaching North Wales] but I was then saying how many Christian friends or friends of friends I’d known who’d died in car accidents, etc. They died. We suffered grief. God didn’t stop it from happening.

Interestingly in the above verses it doesn’t say God will stop it from happening. In fact it says these things MUST happen. Too often, especially the evangelical charismatic branch of Christianity, has said God will stop us suffering. But this isn’t what Jesus says to his followers just before he dies and before the authorities turn against his followers. He says that it is only the one who stands firm who will survive.

Now I don’t think that means that we won’t get hurt, battered, lose things and people important to us. I think it means that we must stand strong in the faith that the Creator of the Universe and the one who is allowing all this chaos because they knew why loves us all unconditionally and will give us the peace and joy that transcends all understanding.

So I am grateful that I have a lovely warm solid house to be sheltered in, that we have lots of food, that we live in a town and so don’t have to get the car out, but above and beyond all that I am grateful that The Creator of The Universe loves not just me but all my family, friends, acquaintances, and even people I don’t like and don’t know, unconditionally.

[Though of course my very human side also wishes that we could have a weekend where we didn’t have to worry about the weather and could just go for a nice long walk and lunch out!!! 🙂 ]

Psalm 23 – part 5

LLandulas beach 1st July 2024 Photographed by myself

This little tree appeared after a landslide took down the nearby cliff which had two large conifers on it. The thought is that this was a seed from one of them. When we had huge storms here in April all this coast was under water, with the stones being thrown on to the coastal path. This little tree, because it is on its own, was unprotected, covered in sea water, and yet it has survived.

Do you sometimes feel like that little tree? Not in your true environment, alone, drowning, covered in something that is toxic to you? That dark valley place? Well as we saw in part 4 God understands and David says in his psalm

I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

Psalm 23:4

I’m not sure about you but I fear lots of things. I know I shouldn’t because I’m comfortably off, have my own home, have enough money to not only eat well but to go away on trips, to run a car, to have friends round, to go out for meals. I have a good husband that I get on with and we can have a laugh. I get to write, to walk my dog safely, and to grow as me. I live in a safe neighbourhood where crime is reported because it is rare. But I do fear.

I can fear not being liked, not getting these posts “right”, not having “enough”, worry about my children, my mum, my in-laws, my friends, what I should be doing with my life. Sometimes I even wake up in the night worrying about what to cook for eat and will those eggs have gone off! Oh yes that’s a genuine one.

But God says do not fear many many times in the Bible and here it comes right after walking through that dark valley, which is much worse than what am I going to do with the eggs in my fridge!

I know when I fear that I am not trusting God – whether that is with the eggs in my fridge or my children and the things they go through. If I fear then I am trying to hold on to control. I am trying to keep things in my ways of doing and being and not handing them to God who can then do as God knows best.

Why then follow the fear line with the rod and staff line? Now I’ve heard all sorts of sermons about the rod and staff being discipline and guidance but this morning, whilst I was pondering what to write, I felt God say that the “rod and staff” are the tools of a shepherd’s trade. No shepherd in the Middle East would go out without his rod and staff.

This line is to remind us that God always goes out with the tools of their trade – whatever that happens to be at any given moment. We aren’t always compared to sheep in the Bible. Sometimes people are compared to fish, coins, eagles, wheat, weeds, etc. and the tools of the farmer, fisherman, housewife, etc are all different to those of the shepherd but God is more than able to change tools as the metaphors change.

But in all this I have to remember that if I am fearful then I am not trusting God and probably not believing God loves me unconditionally. or that God knows what the right tools for this situation are. Perhaps when I am fearful I am trying to be god????