Gimme a Break

As I sit in my office wondering how a three hour span can be filled with sunshine, the most ominous storm I have ever seen, and then a calm, almost windless, cloudy environment, I think that Florida is kind of incredible. This, however, gets me to thinking about our lives. Isn't this odd Florida weather kind of a picture of our lives?

Before anyone envisions our bodies flying across the sky for an hour inbetween the calm stretches, I should assert that I am largely referring to the spiritual sense. Though as I think about it, it might be sort of awesome to be carried about a storm for an hour. Sort of like being bounced about on a trampoline by a person weighing ten times as much you, I can imagine a feeling of awesomeness. Of course, the cold reality of gravity makes this impossible and the foreboding reality of debris in the air, makes it undesirable.

So, what is possible (and even inevitable) is that from time to time we seem to have periods in our lives of tremendously harrowing circumstances. Despite the fact that we'd like it to be this way, it doesn't typically happen to us one small issue at a time. Our lives usually have a plethora of things all attacking us at once and we feel as if we are being tossed to and fro and carried about by our problems.

Thankfully, though, these periods are often followed up by periods of wonderful calm. Some choose to look at this as the calm before the next storm, but I choose to look at it as God's rehabilitative process. God is giving us the gift of a vacation from our problems, and that is wonderful.

When people ask the inevitable question, "Why do bad things happen to good people," my first thought is these times of calm. And I realize that we have good things happening to bad people. As I become more and more aware of the depravity which envelopes my life and the lives of those that share the planet with me, I am more and more aware that it is a gracious thing that God spares any of us.

The violent, tormenting storms happen all the time. I can easily see how we could be continually tested like Job was. Yet, fortunately, we get a break every now and again. For that, I am exceedingly grateful. So the next time you have an agonizing, difficult time, just be thankful that you recognize the pain and suffering, as it is not the norm. I, for one, am thankful for the break after excruciating, tortuous storms of life!