This morning I was up and out the door by 4:30am for a flight to Philadelphia. As I drove to the airport, a local radio station talked about “winds topping 70 MPH” and severe thunderstorms. My first thought was of the items in our yard that would probably end up in someone else’s. My second thought was of the safety of my family since I would be gone all day. My last thought was about the return flight I had scheduled for later that evening and if it would be delayed or cancelled.

Through the wonders of technology (twitter basically), I sat in the airport waiting to board and read accounts and reports of a terrible storm crossing the United States. I read reports of sirens going off, kids being let out early from school and power outages. I sat there in that airport concerned for my family and felt completely…utterly…

helpless.

Tonight I sit here reflecting on that feeling and the events of the day and wonder if I don’t feel that same feeling seeing some friends go through storms right now. The prayer requests come across like the reports of bad weather on twitter. We feel so distant, so helpless and don’t know what we can do to help get our friends out and to a place of “safety”. Maybe you feel that way right now too. Maybe it’s family, friends, people in your church, people at work or even you yourself are facing that storm. Psalm 121:1-2 states:

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

As I sat in that airport today, I could only lift my eyes to the hills and ask the Maker of heaven and earth to protect my family and friends through the storm. As we flew through that weather coming home, I repeated the requests but this time for myself as well. As often the case with my posts, I don’t have the answers to how we can best help our friends when we’re outside the storm. Psalm 121:1-2 is probably a good place to start.

I made it home in one piece (although it was sketchy at best) and my family were all fine and life was back to normal. When the storms pass in our friends lives, they will be too.

×