Monsoon season in
Korea is not the time to visit if you want to enjoy your vacation.
As we’re making plans for family to come this summer, we’re determined to avoid
this time of year when water gushes from the sky nonstop and winds blow
and beat against our wall to wall windows causing them to rattle like they’re
going to explode. Our three story villa, which has an amazing view of the bay,
unfortunately also gets the most aggressive winds during this time
since we have nothing standing between us and the waters. Like so many of the
older buildings on the island it wasn’t designed well, so when these storms come
water seeps and sometimes pours in the windows, puddling on the floor. It’s a stressful
two weeks of constantly mopping up water, trying to keep the wallpaper and the
curtains from being damaged and making sure we don’t have too much
humidity in the apartment so the mold doesn’t grow.
As much as we wish we could make monsoon
season disappear, we can’t. Thankfully, because it comes every year without
fail we can be somewhat prepared for it. But when storms of life hit, they
rarely follow patterns or give any warning. One day everything is fine. We wake
up to a great cup of coffee after a peaceful night’s sleep, look around our
beautiful home and think, “Life’s really been good to me.” Everything seems
secure in our world, so much so that we can’t imagine it being otherwise. Then
a call comes, or a doctor’s visit reveals unwanted news, or we enter into a
disastrous situation that drops from the sky– something that as one person put
it “just gets shoved down our throats.”When storms hit, those closest to us quit saying how well life is treating us. They often don’t know what to say or how to communicate their sorrow or even how to understand the reason why circumstances so earth shattering could come and destroy a life they thought was so impenetrable. The storm that has blown our world apart scares them as much as it hurts us, so they back away and try to buffet their minds from the reality that something similar could wipe out their world in a matter of seconds as well.
All this leaves us alone to digest our tragedy, to try to make sense of events so seemingly meaningless. There’s no amount of thinking, researching, back tracking or focusing on what we could or should have done to give us peace or wisdom in the midst of a storm. The world tells us that we’re destined to go through life’s hardships so we have to toughen up, face the reality of what’s happening and “make the best of it.” The only alternative is to yield to despair like Job’s wife was tempted to do and just give up and die.
But God has a better way. He reminds us, along with giving amazing real life examples, that storms are going to come (not may, might or could, but most definitely will). He says that there’s only one way to survive tragedies and losses and that’s not to man up or try to handle it ourselves but to build our house on the Rock, on Christ -- to anchor our hope so firmly in his finished work on the cross each day so that when the lightening unexpectedly flashes and threatens to destroy us we’re standing on the one foundation that can’t be moved or removed (Matt 7:24-27). When we take refuge in him, we experience what Paul did when he said, “We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9). We’re weather beaten but not destroyed by the storms of life because Christ is our Foundation, our Hope, our Deliverer. He promises that no matter how terrible the storm, how costly the destruction, it can’t separate us from his unshakable love and the promise that we’re his forever
Life can and often does change in the blink of an eye, and no one knows what will happen tomorrow (Js 4:14). If we live long enough, we’ll encounter huge storms, and they’ll likely be unexpected. One minute we’re here, the next we’re gone. One day we’re piling up wealth, the next our investments fail or we lose a job and everything we’ve worked for comes to nothing. One year we’re celebrating our marriage the next we discover our partner has found someone else and everything we’ve been living is a lie. One day we’re basking in our good health, the next we find we have only a short time to live. These scenarios are almost inconceivable because we often feel so secure, so alive, so blessed, so immovable in the hours just before the storm.
The option isn’t to make the storms go away. Like monsoon season in Korea, some are going to push their way into our lives no matter how vigilant we are in trying to prevent them. We can’t toughen up and weather them ourselves, since we’re just flesh and blood and honestly lacking the ability to control anything in the world. The only reasonable solution is to put our hope in Christ today and to trust him not only to get us through the hard times, but after we’ve made it through to deliver us from death and the grave. He promises that once we’ve surrendered our hearts to him, admitted our need of his saving work and transferred our trust from ourselves to his work that he’ll never fail us or forsake us. We may possibly die in one of life’s storms. But if we’re in Christ we don’t have to be afraid – even of death. "Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rm 8:35-39).
