“This is the earliest we’ve ever had some of the flower beds weeded and ready for shredded bark,” I proudly mentioned to my husband mid-May.
Evidently, I spoke too soon.
In the many years we’ve lived in this home, we have experienced a number of tornado warnings. However, this is the first time the warning came complete with a tornado! Watching a video on the second floor of our home, I received a call from my husband informing me of the warning.
I made my way to the main floor, and opened the front door to take a peek. The screen door, glass still in, only opened a few inches due to the force of the wind. At this point, I quickly relocated myself to the basement.
Suddenly, I heard a howling wind, followed by a HUGE thud. So HUGE that I not only heard it, I could feel it!
Moments later, it grew quiet.
At this point, home alone, I was thankful for the recent installation of an automatic generator. I have experienced far too many outages without heat or electricity. Although I must say, they’re not the greatest for sleeping when it’s located right by your head.
Waking after about half of my normal amount of sleep, I went to the front porch to assess the damage. It was just before dawn, and as I looked out the front door, I couldn’t see much of anything. When I walked onto the front porch, all I saw was a wall of leaves. I walked to the end of the porch, but my exit was blocked by more leaves. Our little weeping cherry tree, purchased with our wedding money many years ago, was nowhere to be seen.
Uh oh!
As the sun rose, I discovered that the huge maple tree that stood just off the corner of our home was now horizontal. It stretched the entire length of our house, including our garage, and beyond! My husband estimates the tree was eighty feet tall (now long).
Where do you even start with something this monumental?
As I inspected the tree, I thought of something Paul said in his letter to the Colossians: Remain deeply rooted in him; continue being built up in him. . . (Col 2:7, CJB).
This tree was not deeply rooted – far from it! For a very tall tree, the roots were quite shallow. I can now say with confidence that roots five feet deep will not hold up an eighty foot tree in high winds.
Early in my life, I was not deeply rooted either. The first thing I saw was all that was wrong. Jesus said, …if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt 6:23, ESV)
Something happened to me when I started
reading the Bible on a daily basis.
But something happened to me when I started reading the Bible on a daily basis. I began seeing events more positively and less negatively. So instead of listing all that was wrong, I began looking for evidence of God’s hand in the midst of this storm:
- The local hardware store, a very popular place that day, had just enough electricity to run their registers. (One does not pass up an opportunity to buy a new chainsaw!)
- A good friend and his son came with their saws and put them to work. On three separate occasions. In the span of a week!
- A neighbor of another friend (can you tell I live in the country?) let us borrow his log splitter. He even delivered it! I’m not sure how we would’ve managed those two-feet-in-diameter sections of tree trunk without it.
- My husband spent countless hours working on the stump. With it reclining directly over the gas line, most of the digging had to be done by hand.
- A farmer friend of ours drove his front-end loader an hour to cover the six miles between our homes. He wrestled the stubborn stump out of the ground and relocated it into the woods, out of sight. And then he drove another hour back home.
- Our gas line came out of the ordeal unscathed!
It is now two months after the storm. Other than a large crater in our front yard, slightly bent eaves troughs, and a lifetime supply of firewood, you would never know there had been a near-miss from a tornado.
And as branches of the giant maple tree were cut away, our little weeping cherry tree, obscured beneath a multitude of big, leafy branches, miraculously appeared intact – complete with the little, unbroken ornaments beneath it!
And I do mean miraculously!
The large branches missed our little wedding tree, and the smaller branches above it were curved like fingers, cupped perfectly over the little tree, as if it were God’s hand, protecting it.
Unfortunately, we do not always experience near misses. But even with a direct hit, we can still choose to focus on the positive.
Even with a direct hit,
we can still choose to focus on the positive.
What good can you see in your challenging situation today?
Lisa Lewis Koster 
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