Storm

Storm.  This afternoon at 3:05 p.m. Hurricane Ian, categorized as a Category 4 due to its sustained 150mph winds, made landfall at Cayo Costa, Florida—a barrier island near Fort Myers. A massive weather system, Ian is 500 miles across. For comparison, the state of North Carolina, from tip to tide, is 503 miles across. For contrast, driving 500 miles at 65mph, takes 7.7 hours—yet Ian is crawling at a devastating slow pace (8 mph) in a north-northeasterly direction. The slower the storm, the more rain, wind, storm surge, and havoc it produces. Ian is living up to its hype as a havoc-wreaker. Tonight, and tomorrow night at this slow speed, will be a night that Ian will certainly dominate the headlines, the Coast Guard, the 9-1-1 dispatch call centers, the fire departments, police departments, and hospitals in every city along Ian’s warpath, not to mention nursing homes, prisons, and most vulnerable sectors.

This storm is new, but storms are not new. Only a few historic storms remain newsworthy a month, a year, a decade later. May Ian be historically forgettable in that regard: forgettably low in its human casualty rate, forgettably low in its property loss, forgettably low in its forced evacuations and catastrophic losses of housing. But some storms are famous, even infamous: Moses’ storm, Elijah’s storm, Jonah’s storm, Ezekiel’s storm, Paul’s storm.

The storm that Jesus slept through in the stern of a single-hulled fishing boat was unforgettable. While he slept, his disciples, many of whom were professional fishermen who had lived their whole life on the Sea of Galilee, genuinely thought that they were goners. They were annoyed, feeling even betrayed, that Jesus was not bailing water, or rowing, or praying, or being somewhat helpful like the rest of them. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38). “And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still! And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).

Aside from the miracle—which is jarring on every level—think of the humanity wrapped up in that interesting, accessible, and understandable question! Do you not care? Perhaps the Lord is being asked that exact question right now in Ian’s wake. It is a legit question, I suppose, but it was the wrong question to ask at this juncture. The Lord already settled the issue of do you not care. After all, Jesus was soaking wet, too, miles from shore, in the same storm with his disciples. God’s care for the disciples had been settled by his arrival, by his presence. The better (dual) question is: “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” What about this storm made your belief in me turn to panic? The storm isn’t about caring but believing. The storm revealed that the disciples did not have enough belief about the most fearsome force in that storm, which was Jesus himself. They would never forget this storm!

The scariest part of the storm was not the wind or the rain, it was Jesus who, while sleeping, summoned the storm and who, upon waking, silenced the storm with a word. God, the Lord of weather, was in their boat. They didn’t believe, even accusing Jesus of nonchalance. But a mercifully new storm whipped up when the rainstorm had calmed down. “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41). This second storm was far worse, and far better.

Balance

Balance.  “Balance,” wrote J. I. Packer (Knowing God), “is a horrible, self-conscious word.” In his view, a (so-called) well-rounded Christian, who insulates himself from risk and remains aloof, is tragically disconnected from Jesus’ radical ideas of denial, holiness, and sacrificial service. In that sense, Packer is not wrong. But balance is not only that. In the physical world, balance is a strong force, albeit secondary to and dependent upon the power of God.

Today, or some may cite tomorrow depending on which part of the sun is measured, is the Autumnal Equinox where the earth hovers in a brief and relative state of balance on its own tilted, twirling axis. By tomorrow (or by Friday), the thin balance of Equinox will have rolled toward winter’s darkness (in the Northern Hemisphere). Yet, year after year, this blue marble on which we live doesn’t roll off into outer darkness after the Equinox. It returns to balance in the springtime of every year. And so, God balances even the apparent imbalance of our planet’s constant motion. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psa. 19:1).

The disequilibrium we fear might happen to us in our smaller spheres of existence, our loss of control at a much lower elevation than the sun and the earth, is rather ridiculous. Do we really think that we have enough power to jar loose Earth’s orbit or, even more preposterously, to eject ourselves from the grip of God’s grace? I might not think so rationally, but I sometimes live as though cosmic balance is in jeopardy. But it is not! “Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter” (Psa. 74:16-17). “Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars!” (Psa. 148:3).

Balance is not ours to establish, to worry about, to assist, or to ruin. Balance—if we even want to call it that—is the Lord’s. He keeps it. He keeps all. He keeps us. “The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night” (Psa. 121:5-6). We can rest assured: “He has done all things well” (Mark 7:37).

The Unfairness of God

The Unfairness of God.  The Golden Rule forms the historically set high-water mark for interpersonal relationships, an ethos that is rare in the world even with God’s help and utterly impossible without God’s help. “As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them” (Luke 6:31; see also Matt. 7:12). What The Golden Rule idealizes, Christ incarnates. Think about this profound principle a beat longer than it takes to recite it from rote memory. It is completely inverted from all our social norms, wildly countercultural, and baldly unfair.

If I wish to be respected, then I respect others. If I wish privacy and freedom, then I afford privacy and freedom to others. If I wish to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, then I impart health, wealth, and wisdom to others. Wait a second! The calculus of this relational equation feels grossly imbalanced and naïve. How can giving away to others that which I most desire effectually spin back to myself some form of a boomerang benefit, freely returning to me that which I freely give away? The math doesn’t add up. The Golden Rule is hard to understand, extraordinary to experience, and risky if most people on the planet are like me. And they are.

Normally, when I find a penny, I pick it up. Why? Because within this analogy, I want all day long to have good luck. Abnormally (i.e., never), do I supply a penny for someone else to find. Because, what if the wrong sort of someone else finds my money? I certainly don’t want an unsavory person all day long to have good luck, not if I can help it. I’ll buy a meal for a panhandler, but I won’t give him cash for the same reason: I don’t want to help him to buy cheap booze, even if he might consider a bottle of hooch an all-day-long example of good luck. After all, fair is fair. He squandered his chance. Why should I subsidize his foolishness?

Yet, if the verse housing The Golden Rule were followed to its paragraph break, then we would see that the unsavory person is exactly the audience that Jesus intended for The Golden Rule. “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them … But love your enemies and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:32, 35). The marvel of The Golden Rule is not found in the boomerang benefit returned to the giver but in the transformative miracle of generosity while expecting nothing in return. This is what is elsewhere in the Bible called grace. In every way any accountant might balance the columns at the bottom of that transaction, grace does not add up. It is costly. It is unfair. God himself pays the cost for unsavory persons who squandered their chance, who might even misuse his kindness to buy a pint of liquid luck. Extravagantly he credits, even to his enemies, his own life. If God is unfair to anyone, he is only unfair to himself so that he might be generous to unsavory people, like me.

Your Sandals

Your Sandals.  We are sojourners in the wilderness of used tires. Our one car is about at the end of its wandering life. But since that elderly vehicle doesn’t warrant new tires, and because it wouldn’t pass inspection due to two threadbare tires on the front, I drove it down to the shop where the stalagmites stamped with Firestone, Bridgestone, and BF Goodrich grow. Time stands still in the used tire lot while the attendant searches out back for my magic numbers: 265/70 R18. “Ah, boss, 255s will work. You won’t even be able to tell the difference.” “Ok, but will you come down a little on the price for the mismatch?” Three hours later, I passed my inspection and paid my dues for the privilege of driving on the highway.

It goes without saying that I had time to think while I swatted at mosquitoes that had been born and bred in the rubberized stacks of used tires. I thought about Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert. Moses, who pontificated to the young nation as his shift was ending, said, “I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet” (Deut. 29:5). It was not a random fact that Moses casually dropped but an object lesson that everyone had collectively experienced—perhaps an ancient equivalent of driving for forty years and never needing new tires. Look at your feet in this barren wasteland—your shoes have not worn off your feet, folks. Think on that and thank the Lord! God who has been faithful in the smallest details will be faithful in the largest.

Unlike Israel, our tires have worn off our rims. But like Israel, God has always provided the means to get us from Point A to Point B. Sometimes, it has been with a set of four, brand new Michelins. Sometimes, it has been with patched up, mismatched, generic tires that someone had already junked once. But always has the Lord provided. From that unexpectedly vivid object lesson, we can project by faith that God will continue to provide for our every need in Christ Jesus, even when the taxes are due, and the inspection fails.