The Time Before The Storm

You thought you knew what it meant to rely on God, but you still thought you could fix things if you just worked hard enough. You, you you. It was up to you. You needed to be smarter, come up with a better strategy, read another article, find a better doctor. You. It was your hands you looked to to bring about salvation. You didn’t see your powerlessness. Your dependence on God was not yet revealed to you.

And so out of His infinite mercy, He showed you. The storm lasted years. One mountain sized wave after the other. One lesson in humility, brokenness, and choiceless dependence on God after the other, until you finally surrendered. Until you finally learned a deeper truth than the numb comfort could ever teach. The storm was there to form you. To knead your heart into softness, into your full humanity.

When the opening came, it was when you finally learned that your hands must work, yes, because as a servant of God you must struggle in His way. But the opening would not be the outcome of that toil, of your smarts, of your skill. Work is to fulfill your duty, not to cause the storm to turn into the sun. Only when your heart found it’s truth, it’s peace, only when it unloaded the weight of responsibility for moving the sea, did the storm pass.