Last week our area got hit by a pretty heavy storm early in the morning. For an hour or so I laid awake listening to the blowing wind and watching the lightening show. Finally, about 6 a.m. we got up to a completely dark home. The power was out. That meant no coffee. Not a good way to start our day. How dare that storm deprive me of my morning coffee! I looked out the window and saw a couple of my patio chairs had blown over, but nothing bad at all. In fact, in our part of town, it was simply a big storm that knocked out power.
On a gamble, I decided to get dressed and head over to the church building hoping they had electricity on that side of town. They did, but the devastation was incredible! Hundreds of trees had been uprooted, blown over, broken in half. Most of the roads to the church were impassible at points and I weaved my way around the roads to the building. Luckily the church only received minimal damage, but we still had a big mess around the property. A neighbor had a large tree down the middle of their home, and they weren’t the only ones that suffered terrible property damage. The only good news is that no one was killed or injured in the storm.
Then, I got a picture later that day from one of our members. Another member who is crippled and pretty much confined to a wheelchair or scooter was out helping a neighbor who had a tree fall across his driveway. While they were cutting up the tree, she was in her scooter dragging branches to the road to help them clean up their mess. Tell me again, why you can’t help out with …?
What analogy of life. We all have storms in our lives, and they seem bad to us. That’s how we humans think. But, in comparison to others, many of us realize our storm while not pleasant for us, is nothing like what others have suffered. Our storm is inconvenient and puts us on a search for a fix, but if we make the journey with our eyes open to the storms of others we quickly see just how bad many around us have it and that our storms are small when we comprehend what they are going through. Another lesson is to see that even those with terrible storms can bring comfort to others who are suffering as well. They often understand the struggle better than anyone else.
I don’t want to minimize anyone’s storm, I just want to challenge you to think about what you are going through and before you wrap yourself in self-pity, think about how it fits on the measuring scale of life’s storms. It may help you keep things in perspective or ignite a desire to help those who are suffering even more than yourself.