The wind was roaring. The rain was pounding. It looked like our home would flood. My family lived on the Texas coast and a hurricane was raging around us. Then, suddenly, things went deathly silent. We were in the eye of the storm.

The media warned us to stay inside but there was no way I was going to miss this. It was absolutely amazing. There were downed limbs, power lines and debris everywhere but the air was perfectly still. An eerie enveloping silence replaced the angry roar of wind and rain.

Above I could see a beautiful blue sky and wispy, white clouds serenely drifting by. It looked like I was in the middle of a lazy Summer day instead of a destructive storm.

Then a strange thought occurred to me. If I could stay in the center of the storm, walking in the eye, I could remain in a place of perfect peace. If I could keep my gaze fixed upward, I wouldn’t even see all the destruction around me.

These last couple of years, our world has endured destructive storm after storm – virus fears, closing of churches, the deaths of friends and loved ones. Many of us are facing personal storms of health struggles, relationship problems, financial challenges, job insecurity on top of all the regular trials of living in a sin-ravaged, fallen world.

Jesus warned that we would have tribulation in this world. We can’t outrun or avoid all storms. Some are inevitable. But, as I discovered in that hurricane, God has a place of peace for His people in the midst of the most devastating storm.
That place of peace is in the center – in the eye.

In the center of His will aware of His always watching eye. When our thoughts are centered on Him and when the Lord and His purposes are at the center of our life the storm does not cease but we find a place of peace in the middle of it because we know He has all things under His control and His plans for us are plans for good.

Sometimes things happen that make us doubt His concern or even awareness of our situation. “Can this really be God’s will for me?” Granted, some of our pain is self-inflicted by our own rebellion but, even then, we can be sure that nothing comes our way that didn’t first receive His loving approval. And you can rest assured that: His will for you is exactly what you would want for you – if you knew all the details.

These are challenging times. These are days to let our hope in God shine brightly for a floundering world. Anyone can stand in faith when times are easy. These are days we can make a difference by not surrendering to fear and uncertainty, by not getting sucked up into the divisiveness of our culture, by not replacing our eternal message with a lesser one.

Isaiah 26:3-5
You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.
He humbles the proud and brings down the arrogant …