When Almost All is Lost...

Hasn't the news been unsettling....for a while now.  How far do we need to go back?  But considering the tornadoes this week, the fires burning here in Texas and literally within a very few miles of our home (not threatening us though), the flood along the Mississippi, and storms going on even this evening from East Texas to Ohio, ...and that's just in America....do we look at the signs....at the seasons....?

When I see the pictures of devastation, it is hard to even imagine the trauma and heartbreak that families are going through.

As I prayed for our fellow countrymen and women, children, and first responders, my heart so moved by what these people are feeling and seeing, what they've lost....I tried to make sense of it all.  Thoughts came and went...arguing against each other.  

Can we make sense of it?  Should we try to make sense of it?

God is God of the weather. He rules the wind, the waves....the floods.... the tornadoes....

  

BUT HE IS A GOOD GOD....ALL the time, the same yesterday, today, and forever... 

Job asked, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?"..."In all this Job did not sin with his lips. Job 2:10......

...and I think of Sarah Palin's account of her conversation with her husband, Todd, after they found out their little son would be born with Down's Syndrome....she asked Todd, 

"Why us?" and he replied, "Why not us?" (italics mine)

I think of yesterday's devotion (May 24) in My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers, based on Revelation 1:17:

"And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, 

'Do not be afraid...'"  

"...In the midst of the awfulness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ....the right hand of the Everlasting Father....it is ineffable peace and comfort, the sense that 'underneath are the everlasting arms,' full of sustaining and comfort and strength.  When once His touch comes, nothing at all can cast you into fear again.  Do I know Him like that?"....

...."and if I'm ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God."  (italics mine)

At the end of the day...what  really gave me some peace...was this thought....When almost all is lost in this world, what really matters is love....the greatest of the three....faith, hope and love.

The love of God is far greater than the storm and what it has taken. 

I'm no expert on the theology of this kind of loss.  But my family has experienced tragic loss.  A 16 year old niece lost in a 4-wheeler accident with my son, physically intact, but scarred.  A brother-in-law, father of the niece, suddenly gone at age 50, only 5 years after his daughter was buried.  The sister-in-law and her 2 sons, at that time not yet men, left alone, struggling in every way.  The loss of our livelihood and ranching lifestyle after a serious back injury, that except for God's healing power, almost left my husband paralyzed.  Years of adjustment, physically, financially, spiritually....but along the way....LOVE of God and family sustained us...through struggle and victory....grief and healing.... 

because we were raised up... by the hand of God.

One thing I learned in loss, that was monumental for me, was that I had to trust in the sovereignty of God (Faith), the Promises of God (Hope), and the Love of God... to be my All in All.

To you who have lost...may you find His hand lifting you up by His love.