Sand or Stone

Now that I'm back in the newspaper industry for a time I'm once again in an environment where we are constantly monitoring the news. As you can imagine, computer monitors all throughout the building were filled with images from weather.com as we all waited to see if Huricane Katrina was going to be as devastating as was predicted. The warnings were really scary, saying that this could be a catastrophic event for New Orleans that would leave the city forever changed and have ripple effects throughout the country. I heard predictions of 10's of thousands of deaths, nearly every building toppled, and the entire city submerged in a toxic soup for weeks.

By mid morning everyone was breathing a little easier. The storm had shifted slightly to the east and the Biloxi area would bear the brunt of the storm instead of New Orleans. Why was this a better scenario? Because New Orleans is far more vulnerable than other places along the coast. It's below sea level, surrounded by water on three sides, and is essentially a city built on sand. Though a slight shift to the east was bad news for Biloxi, overall, everyone seemed a bit relieved. It was still a bad storm, but it's fury was unleashed on an area less vulnerable than New Orleans.

There have been a lot of storms in my life. Many of them would be about a category 1; difficult, but not at all devastating. Every so often the big one will hit each of us. A massive, horribly destructive category 5 crisis will roar through our home, our mind, our heart and our soul with the potential of dashing us to pieces. Unlike New Orleans, we have a choice. We can choose now how vulnerable we will be when the big one hits.

All weekend I watched on television as people prepared for Katrina. They boarded up their windows. They tied everything down. They evacuated. Jesus gave us instructions on how to prepare for the big one. He knows we'll all face it sometime. And the degree of our vulnerability when the storm makes landfall is determined by the way we live our life when the sun is shining.

"All who listen to my instructions and follow them are wise, like a man who builds his house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents, and the floods rise and the storm winds beat against his house, it won't collapse, for it is built on rock. But those who hear my instructions and ignore them are foolish, like a man who builds his house on sand. For when the rains and floods come, and storm winds beat against his house, it will fall with a mighty crash." (Matthew 7:24-27)

The time to prepare for the storms of life is not when they are upon us. The time to prepare for the storms of life is when the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and we can see clearly how to build the "house" of our life upon the rock of God's truth, not the sand of our own self-sufficiency.