The Art of Weathering Storms

Yesterday, we had a storm that felt like it came out of nowhere. You couldn’t see anything, dust filled the air, debris flying. You could hear things falling, breaking, hitting, a chaotic cacophony that lasted for a good fifteen minutes. It was messy, scary, disorienting. For a moment, you just had to wait it out, wondering what on earth was happening.

And then it stopped.

This morning, Sunday morning, I stepped outside, and the quiet was different. It was heavier than the usual calm, as if the city itself was still catching its breath from yesterday’s chaos. The streets smelled of rain and moisture. Sunlight peeked through the clouds, painting patches of gold on sidewalks still slick from rain. And I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. The same streets, the same city, but without the mess, without the storm, without the noise.

I often wonder how much of the patterns of creation seem to be written into us, the Creator’s image bearers. How life mirrors what God built into the world. We face storms too – not the kinds that rattle windows, but the ones that shake our souls: a breakup we never saw coming, a diagnosis that rewrites our future, the loss of someone we love. In the thick of them, it feels impossible to imagine calm. We forget what simple peace feels like. We question if we ever appreciated the quiet, the ordinary, the simple rhythms of life, and we realize how silly we were to take all those things for granted.

But here’s the thing: storms don’t last forever. Creation testifies to it, and Scripture promises it. “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5) Oh, the promises of Scripture, the truth, the hope, the goodness in them. After brokenness, after hardship, after the storms that shake us to our core, restoration comes. Even after destruction, there is grace, there is wonder, and yes… there is hope.

Sometimes it takes a storm to remind us how miraculous calm really is. How precious the ordinary can feel. How much beauty can follow the mess. And how faithful God is to bring beauty out of brokenness, time and time again.