There are many occasions in our life when we will face storms. Incidents that cause us fear, or pain, or grief. Difficult situations that seem to be hard to bear. We wish these things didn’t happen at all. They feel like difficult and burdensom crosses that we have to bear.
Without meaning to diminish the agony that we go through, I want to suggest another way to look at these situations. While these difficulties sometimes bear a similarity with what happens when one is crucified, more often than not, we are really referring to storms, and not crosses. I think it helps to make a distinction between storms and crosses, because the Christian response in each of these cases is different.
A storm
Storms come into our lives. We don’t wish them to occur, but they do. And when a storm comes into our lives it comes much the same way that Tyhpoon Ondoy or Hurrican Katrina struck land. Violent, destructive, fearsome. Sometimes they come unannounced. Some storms are moderate, others are super typhoons. But whether moderate or deadly, all storms pass. Some storms come by so quickly, others linger for a while.
A loss of a job is a storm. A serious illness that afflicts you or someone close to you is a storm. Your computer crashes and you lose your files. You’re rushing to submit a report and your printer doesn’t work; that’s a small storm. A misfortune occurs to one of your children. Storms. Awful. You don’t want them to happen, but they happen.
There are many books written about suffering. Books about how to weather the storms in our lives. And when a storm occurs in a Christian’s life, one just needs to recognize the presence of Jesus, and trust in knowing that He is fully aware about the storms in our lives. Not only is He aware. He is present and with us. We can trust that He has the power to calm the storm. But whether He rebukes the storm or sits it out with us, we can certainly believe that His presence will calm the storm in our heart.
A cross
A cross is different from a storm. A cross is an instrument of deadly punishment. And in the case of the Christian cross, the cross that Jesus carried and resulted in his death, a cross is a choice. It is a choice about whether we ought to assert ourselves, exalt ourselves, put ourselves first, or to humble ourselves, forebear, forgive, do without.
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