Sail through, or soar over, the storm?

Two random, unrelated thoughts about stormy winds:

Random thought #1:

During the race to invent flying machines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the conventional wisdom was that wind was bad. Aspiring pilots waited for perfect calm to attempt their flights. All of them failed.

The Wright brothers were the butt of many jokes because they believed wind was good for flight. The very reason they tested their first airplane at Kitty Hawk was to take advantage of the constant, stiff winds.

The Wrights believed: The windier the better.

The Wright brothers were right.

Random thought #2:

A song we sing at church has this line:

“When the oceans rise and thunders roar/I will soar with you above the storm.”

No worse lyric was ever written for Christians to sing. It’s blather.

Since when does anyone who wants to follow God “soar…above the storm?”

As I recall from my Bible stories, neither Jesus nor his followers soared above storms. They sailed straight into them. The apostle Paul was shipwrecked more than once. During one storm, Jesus told his friend Peter to get out of the boat and walk on the surface of the angry waves! Even when Jesus told one storm to “be still,” it was his disciples–not the weather–that was bothering him.

God followers don’t “soar above storms”; God followers are most often found right in the middle of them.

What can we conclude from this?

If you want to soar, you soar because of the storm; not in spite of it. You soar in the storm; not over it.

The believer’s natural habitat is not easy tranquility; it is stiff and sometimes violent resistance.

Are you in the midst of a storm?

Don’t pray for deliverance; give thanks. This is where you fly.

Grace and peace.