final hurrah

Because it wouldn’t be appropriate if there wasn’t drama till the end…

Hurricane Sandy is completely cramping my style.  Here’s the lowdown… remember how our passports and visas are in an office in NYC until Monday?  And how we fly out in, oh, one week and kinda need them back asap?  Well, to add to the stress, Hurricane Sandy is headed straight toward NYC on Monday/Tuesday.  The concern?  If there is no power and no subway, there will be no people in the office to process our visas and get them back to us by Friday.  Friday.  I’m telling ya- my mind has run through all sorts of worse case scenarios, but a “historic” hurricane of “epic proportions” never ever entered my thoughts.

While incessantly watching the weather channel since yesterday, I continue to come back to that account of Jesus calming the sea.  The disciples were on a boat with Jesus, the storm started getting all crazy, and the disciples were freaking.  They woke Jesus up, and He was all “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”.  Then Jesus told the wind and waves to stop and they did.  Just by His words.  And I love these last words of the disciples: “What kind of man is this?  Even the winds and the waves obey him!”  (From Matthew 8: 23-27… clearly it’s a good thing that I’ve never tried to write a paraphrase of the Bible… just hang with me here.)

It seriously brings me so much comfort knowing that God is no less powerful now than He was then.  In His great power, He can still calm this storm and get our passports and visas back to us in time.  And when we have them in our hands, our response should be a posture of praise, for only He could be responsible for achieving the seemingly impossible.  Our prayer from the very beginning of this process has been that the Lord’s name would be made great through our child’s story.    And so, when these storms- both literal and figurative- have blown through and we are carried by His grace time after time, the only appropriate response is worship… for He has done great things once again.  As I look back at the past few years, one thing is for sure.  The larger the “storm” from which we are delivered, the greater the sense of awe and wonder we tend to have.  So, I have to wonder if getting our passports and visas out of this “monster storm” is one of His final hurrahs before we get Elizabeth home.

Sometimes God answers our prayers in some crazy ways.