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Standing atop a little hill, verdant and fragrant with pine, and melodic with a thousand blended notes sung by a feathery choir, a loving father and trusting child looked toward the far horizon. In his left hand the father held a telescope; with his right hand he gently clasped his child’s fragile fingers. To the southwest, a great storm approached like a black fist rising ominously from earth to heaven, its cloudy fingers scratching the sky above their heads and choking the morning sun. Silver lightning strikes descended from the storm’s belly and struck the earth, followed by loud booms of thunder.
“Son,” the father asked, “how far away is that storm?”
“I don’t know, Daddy,” replied the little boy; “Do you know how far away the storm is?” (The little boy thought his father knew everything). Sure enough, the father knew.
“Yes, son, I know,” the father said.
“How far away is it, Daddy?”
Wanting his beloved son to think for himself, the father did not offer a simple answer to the son’s question, so he asked, “Do you know how to measure the distance of a storm?”
“No, Daddy. How?”
“Watch the lightning.”
Almost immediately another lightning bolt pierced the ether, and the father began to count, “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five,” and then, BOOM!
The child shuddered at the thunderclap, and then with startled voice asked the father, “Why were you counting, Daddy?”
“That’s how I measure the distance of a storm,” the father explained. “When you see a lightning strike, count as I counted, ‘one thousand one, one thousand two,’ and so forth. Count until you hear the thunder and then stop. Each count is one second, and each second is one mile. If the lightning strikes and you count to three, then you know the storm is three miles away. If you count to four, the storm is four miles away.”
“Daddy, that storm is five miles away!”
How do you know?”
“Because you counted the storm, Daddy; you counted to one thousand five from the lightning to the thunder.”
That’s right, son, the storm is five miles away.”
As they took turns peering through the telescope, the lightning flashed brighter and the thunder grew louder. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three . . . CRACK! BOOM?
“We need to get in the car. The storm is getting too close, and the lightning is dangerous,” the father said.
Unscrewing the telescope from the tripod, then collapsing the tripod, the father gathered the equipment and placed it carefully into the bag in his left hand. With his right hand he took his son’s hand as they walked to the car, carefully placing the telescope on the back floorboard and taking their familiar places in the driver’s and passenger’s seats.
“Buckle up,” said the father.
As the child fumbled the cold metal of his seatbelt, he looked at his father and said, “Daddy, why does God send storms?”
The father thought for a moment and then replied, “Well, lightning and storms bring us rain, and rain brings us flowers. I suppose you could say that storms are God’s way of making things more beautiful.”
“Mommy loved flowers, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did.”
Here endeth the parable; here beginneth the lesson.
Sometimes we see storms coming, and sometimes we do not. Atop our little hills of speculation, sometimes we can see the dark clouds rolling in, catch the foreboding flashes of the silver lightning, and feel the clap of rumbling thunder. Sometimes we can even approximate the distance of the storm . . . one thousand one, one thousand two, . . .
Sometimes, but not always.
Sometimes the lightning surprises us without warning and strikes dangerously close, followed swiftly by a thunderclap that shakes us to our very souls, and soon the rain begins to fall.
Surely our reader understands the storm metaphor. The storm represents the storms of life, and the lightning and thunder the storms’ effects upon us as we weather the storms, sometimes expected, other times unexpected. And the rain . . . the raindrops are our tears, the nectar of our soul that falls from our eyes when see the lightning far or near upon the horizon, and hear the thunder close behind.
Even with our little telescopes of speculation, we cannot accurately predict the thunder and the lightning, but we know that the storms will come. And we do believe, like the father in our parable, that the storms are God’s way of bringing flowers, that even in the lightning and the thunder God intends a beautiful purpose.
God has a bigger telescope than we do. He sees things we cannot see, and understands things we cannot comprehend: “His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways.” He knows how and why the lightning brings the thunder, how the thunder portends the rain, and how the rain promises the flowers. But we . . . when we see the lightning and hear the thunder, when we’re in the midst of the storm and the rainfall is heavy and maybe even the flood is rising, it’s difficult for us to see the flowers of God’s beautiful purposes enfolded within the storms. But as surely as the crimson rose is within the bud, the bud within the stem, the stem within the seed, and the seed within the earth awaiting the thunder, lightning, and rain, every circumstance in our lives is rooted deeply in divine purpose, even when the lightning flashes and the thunder crashes, and that is the purpose of this book – to remind our reader that “all things work together for good for them that love God, for them who are the called according to His purpose” – “all things” – even the lightning, even the thunder, yes, and even the storm.
From ETERNITY'S GATE: Reflections on Sorrow and Suffering, Trials and Troubles by Hal Brunson
From ETERNITY'S GATE: Reflections on Sorrow and Suffering, Trials and Troubles by Hal Brunson
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