One dark afternoon in my childhood, a storm was brewing. It was the kind of storm that moved my Grandmother to bring all her children into the house, shut the doors and windows tight, unplug the t.v., refrigerator, and stove. On this particular evening, as we huddled in the central bedroom of our home, the wind howled mightily and the rain fell suddenly. I could hear the tree limbs near my bedroom scraping against the side of the house with a scratching, clawing sound. My Grandfather, noticing my nervousness, chuckled a little, and said: "Don't worry, SonBoy. This is just one of God's good little storms. I'll show you the meaning in the morning."
I woke up the next morning to the smell of my Grandmother's bacon and headed to the breakfast table. I had forgotten about the storm. Near the end of breakfast, my Grandfather winked at me: "SonBoy, let's go out in the front yard. I want to show you the meaning of that storm last night,"
From the front porch I could see the lawn littered with black, skeleton like limbs that had fallen out of the trees. The yard was full of broken, twisted limbs. "SonBoy", my grandfather said...."See what God has done? At the end of winter the Lord often sends a storm to clean out the trees. With the soaking rain, the limbs get heavy, and with the blowing wind, the dead and dying fall out on the ground. What the Lord is doing in a storm like that, is getting ready for Spring. He's cleaning out the dead stuff from the living tree, so Spring can come."
Across the years I have seen this principle applied in many areas of life. Sometimes a lot of decaying and dead stuff gets accumulated in our lives. Hurt and pain, unforgiveness, disappointment, bitterness, envy, strife can collect and build up in a person, a family, an organization. Soon, a long winter seems to set in. A mood takes over. A storm is coming.
When I was young I used to quiver and hide from such storms. But as I matured, I finally learned the lesson my Grandfather was teaching me. These storms are part of the seasons of life. Part of life and death. Part of maturing and growing up. Our heavenly Father, desiring life for us, not death, has a way of shaking us up. He has a strange way of pruning dead stuff out of life. A storm comes. A squall. A lot of rain. A lot of wind. A lot of shaking. But the alive...live. The dead, is shaken out. And Spring can come.
