I’ve always been enthralled with storms.   I have curtailed my weather watching habits to some degree but I’m still somewhere well above the obsession threshold.   I think what I love most is the sense that a storm of some kind is imminent.   I love the change in windspeed and direction or a drop in the temperature.  I love it when you can feel the electricity in the air and the smell of approaching rain.   I love the dark and ominous countenance of the storm clouds as they assemble on the horizon like a mighty army.   All of it is indicative of the change that is coming.

Some are terrified by these things.   And it’s true - storms can be couriers of destruction and devastation.   At times, without discretion or respect of persons, a storm marches through undeterred, leaving everything in its path forever changed.   It is terrifying.   And it’s awe inspiring.

It is equally terrifying and exciting when we feel the first whispers of the winds of change in our lives.    Something is building on the horizon – mysterious and unknown but advancing towards us with steady gate and unrelenting resolve.  

Change – the thought of it makes some uncomfortable or anxious.   For some it is frustrating.   Just when you’ve settled into a routine or found a measure of comfort and security, the winds begin to blow and threaten all the things that allow for your comfort and peace of mind.   Maybe a change in your health or career.   Maybe your family makeup or dynamic is changing.   Maybe your financial status.   Could be a new season of life for you or a change geographically.   It could be anything, really.

I suppose I am like you.   I don’t relish change.   But to me there is no more futile, unfruitful exercise than endeavoring to control the things that are completely out of my control.   I didn’t say that the futility keeps me from doing it.   I am just saying that I have never succeeded. I wish I were a quicker study.

But what I am learning is that God’s script for my life trumps the script that I spend so much time trying to write.   Things change… all the time.   As I reflect on my journey over the last few years I have to be honest and admit that very little of what has transpired is the stuff about which I have dreamed.   The script that I wrote has been dismissed for a script that I would have never thought to write.

And that’s a good thing…

I am certainly not saying that the way life has played out for me is so much easier than the way I imagined it would have to be.   That’s hardly the case.   But in retrospect it is amazing to see the things that God has both decreed and allowed that have made me a better man - a more completely equipped and willing servant of God than what I might otherwise have been.   Slowly, I am learning to trust God when change seems imminent.   Less and less I find myself digging my heals in to fight for the comfort of my status quo.   Day by day, through what I observe and experience and through what God reveals to me in His Word, I am embracing His sovereign control over all things.   He is good to make so much of the evidence of His providential workings so plain for me to see.  

The winds are exciting me.   I don’t know what’s coming… but He does…

God, thank you for your sovereign wisdom and control over all things.  Help me to exercise an ever-increasing faith as the exciting gift of life unfolds in front of me in sometimes unimaginable ways.  Help me to embrace the winds of change as you transform me into the Me of My Dreams……