We’re slowly emerging from a harrowing season.

About a month ago, as part of a volunteer helpline, I heard people weep on the phone as they scrambled for hospital beds for their loved ones who fought for their lives. I remember the voices of some of them. A woman wailing—her mom had died and her sister desperately needed an ICU bed. A young boy weeping as his mom was in an ambulance, but he didn’t know where the ambulance was headed as there were no beds with ventilators available. A man speaking in anxious bursts while thumping his wife’s back—I could hear her high-pitched wheezing, as she gasped for breath.

A friend of ours tells us how he wore PPE suits and helped bury or cremate the dead. He is a Bible school grad, not trained to drive ambulances that carry bodies. But he was compelled to help. Another friend, desperate. The migrant laborer communities he works with were starving. They hadn’t had work in weeks and he feared they won’t be able to feed their kids.

In the span of days, I sent messages to seven friends who had lost a parent. Just a couple of days ago a friend lost his mom to the virus. His dad passed on just a few weeks ago, also a victim of the pandemic.

Newspapers report that thousands of children have been orphaned by the pandemic. I heard of one family where both the grandparents and parents died leaving a 11-year-old boy all alone. He has the same name as my son. His entire family wiped out in a matter of three weeks.

The ache in our hearts was heavy, the fear palpable, the helplessness virulent.

And the only way I knew to deal with the flood of emotions was to cry out to the Lord.

Maybe the crisis in your life looks different. Maybe it’s relational or has to do with finances or with your emotional or mental health. But, we all face inevitable storms at some point in our lives. The question is, how do we navigate those storms?

Do we trust God through the trials He allows? Or do we rely on the props we’ve created for ourselves?

In this 5-day Bible plan, we’ll look at how we can cry out to God in a crisis because we can trust His character. 

With the incident of Jesus calming the storm as the backdrop, this Bible devotional encourages us to focus on our Savior who will see us through our setbacks.

Join me in this 5-day plan on YouVersion or, if you’re not on the Bible app, you can download it here and follow along.

I hope these thoughts will help steady you through the storms by pointing you to the One who is with us always and promises to get us to the other side.

By the grace of God, the second wave of the pandemic in India is slowing down. The storm is dissipating.

But the fact is in this broken world, we will face trouble. But Jesus assures us with this encouragement: Take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

I just feel compelled to close out this post with a prayer:

Father God, What a privilege it is to come to You in times of calm and in times of crisis. I praise You because You are the unchanging God who carries us through the storms of our lives. I praise You because You are the all-powerful, all-knowing, always-loving God. I praise You because You are my anchor when the waves threaten to engulf me. Help me to hold tight to You and not give in to the lies of the enemy as he tries to instill fear and anxiety in me. Thank You that in You I am an overcomer and that I can experience a deep peace right in the midst of the storm. In Jesus’ name, Amen

 

 

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