A God lesson in the midst of a storm…
2:30 a.m. My bedroom fills with a loud, mechanical female voice – “TORNADO WARNING! TAKE SHELTER!”
My eyes fly open and I turn to see my cellphone flashing on my bedstand. I throw back the covers and force myself to call my two cats, who had been curled up on the end of the bed, in as calm of a voice as I can muster. “Come on, kitties. Follow me.”
One immediately sails off the bed and follows me into the closet. The younger one comes halfway and stops. His iridescent eyes turn to the window as the flash of lightening filters through the curtain. Then an elongated crack of thunder shakes the rafters. He stares at me, frozen. I beckon, a bit sterner. “Come on, kitty.”
He huddles onto his haunches. “Um, nope.”
The warning siren’s wails crescendo. “Cat. Now!”
“Uh-uh.”
As the wind howls and the rain-hail pellets pound on my rattling window, I scoop him up and rush to the closet, closing the door with my other hand. I can feel the air pressure changing and the 85 mph wind swooshing outside. He doesn’t care. He hates closed doors. He wants out and begins pushing his 15 lb weight against it as I hold it shut.
I have been like both of my cats were last night, but I admit I am the reluctant and stubborn one more often. Unaware of the danger, I resist following God. I am not concentrating on if He provides shelter, or is blocking my path for my own good, or leading me to something so much better than what is my reality now. I have my own ideas, my own plans, my own route.
When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. John 10:4
Sometimes we don’t understand where the Good Shepherd leads. It may be in a totally different direction, or a seemingly 
dead end. Maybe even a dark closet with the door closed. But when He calls, who will we act more like? The compliant and totally trusting cat, or the one who would rather have his way, even though he is afraid and unaware of what is about to happen?
I have a cross-shaped plaque hanging on my door jamb. Cut out in the center is the name of Jesus. Each time I use my key in my latch, it reminds me He is with me in my going out and my coming in. Yesterday the wind whistled through the corridor to my apartment. I noticed the plaque had flipped around backward. God, once again, sent me a message.
evening after, or a few days later it thunks my brain. Ah – okay. That was You, Lord. That serendipity was orchestrated by You alone to encourage me, correct my path, or confirm I am in Your will and am headed in the right direction. It always leave me with a tingly warmth that spreads from my heart into my tear ducts.
is just as valid. Souls are being won and hearts are being touched. I am humbled to be asked by Campus Crusades for Christ Canada through The Life Project to come onboard as a writer and editor. It has been a long discerning and vetting process. But as with any missionary, I must raise my own salary.
An eighty year-old friend of mine told me of a cruel joke her older siblings would play on her when she was a little girl in order to prove their dominance. They told her they were going to give her to the “rag man”.
![MP900444553[1]](https://wheredidyoufindgodtoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/mp9004445531.jpg?w=100&h=150)
grouse about it. How often does He detour me from danger and I complain because things are not happening “my way”? How often were those irritating moments that delayed me –like the cat hacking a furball in my shoe just before I went to slip it on, or a button snapping that I have to quickly repair, or the moving van blocking my exit from my apartment complex for a few minutes– actually work to my advantage without me knowing it?
I was asked, what is the one thing in your closet you should probably throw out? If anyone else rummaged through my clothes, they’d most likely choose the ratty ol’ black sweater. It’s faded, a bit threadbare, and stretched out of shape. But it still hangs in my closet…for a reason.
Lately my life has been a grouping of blotches. Things are muddled, not really in focus. Reading a Bible lesson a few days ago, one verse suddenly appeared in bold and a larger font in my mind. “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:7)
You want to pull it, but you know you shouldn’t. That dangling thread on the seam of your clothes is bugging you. Does that describe your life?
dangling thread lest it unravel us. Hope, bolstered by prayer, is the best way to re-anchor our faith. We need to allow our Lord to be the needle which can guide the wayward thread and knot it so it doesn’t affect the rest of the hem that is our life.
When my mother was a child, it came out to the second tuft of branches you see, the ones hanging down toward the water by the backdrop of the white cement of the “old dock”. When I was a child, it had grown to the length of the third tufts, right under where you see the blue raft perched on the dock. When my son was a child, it had grown to the little notch before it bows up again. He is now in his thirties.
