More From Valerie Clark

In today’s meditation, I write about the big storms we experienced in my area. The wind blew trees down and water flooded into our house from under the back door.

We recently had another storm just like this. The thunder and lightning were intense and had small children running to climb into their parents’ beds and household pets flattening their ears in fear. A friend said that she and her husband got such a fright with one particularly loud thunderclap that they both fell out of bed! And the rain pelted down in a fury.

My husband got up and put a towel across the back door to prevent water from surging in again, and he made sure the windows were all closed. He didn’t sleep much that night. I, on the other hand, didn’t hear a thing! I slept through it all. I didn’t hear the loud thunderclaps. I wasn’t aware of the lightning. I didn’t hear the torrential rain coming down. And amazingly, I didn’t know that my husband was climbing in and out of bed several times in the night. I had a blessed and glorious sleep.

Perhaps this is how it was for the wise man who built his house upon the rock. When the rains came and the storm blew, his house stood firm, and he had a jolly good night’s sleep.

However, when the storms of life come upon us — when sudden illness hits us, when we are debilitated, when a loved ones dies, when our finances are not good, when relationships go wrong, when we find ourselves unemployed — we need to anchor to the rock that is Christ Jesus. He is the shelter that we need in the storm. As David says in Psalm 4:8, “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.”