Ice Storms and Life

“…And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ”
Ephesians 3:17b (NIV)

I was astounded at the devastation of the major ice storm that descended on Newton and much of this part of the country back on January 4, 2005. I’d seen ice before … I come from Michigan, after all, and we do have ice up there on occasion … but I had never seen anything like what happened that day.

It was impossible to look at the damages and not be in awe of the power of nature. Indeed, of the power of God.

The damage to trees and plants was monumental. The four towering elm trees on the east side of our property ended the storm half as tall as when the storm began. We could see the difference well before reaching the house. It took the better part of three days to clean up downed limbs and branches and by the time we finished stacking debris at the street for the city to pick up, it looked like a natural material fence from the horse country on the east coast. I told Neal I extended to see horses and riders dressed in red come sailing over the obstacle behind packs of hunting dogs.

There were laments about the trees, but I knew even then that the strong trees would survive. They have. They still bear the scars of that wild storm and they most likely always will. But they not only survived, many of them are thriving now, nearly five years later.

Why?

Because the part of the trees we see, the part that was damaged, is not the most important part of the tree. No. The most important part, the roots, were safely out of the reach of the ice.

When spring came, nourishment rose from the ground through those healthy roots into the branches. The trees began to grow and, by summer’s end, they had begun repairing the damages. Only those trees that were uprooted, were weak to begin with or were taken down afterward, were lost.

People are like trees. Part of us is exposed to the world and subject to the battering and hardships of life. If we are poorly rooted or are rooted in the wrong type of soil, we will not survive the hardships and battering.

However, if we are firmly rooted and grounded in the Word, rooted, as scripture says, in Christ, we will survive. The part seen by the world may look battered and broken, devastated. We may not be as nice looking as we once were and we will bear scars even if our physical appearance remains unchanged.

But the part that matters will be safe in the ground of the love of God. Nourishment will flow into us through that fertile ground and we will survive. We have only to lift our eyes to the Heavens and to God’s mercy and grace, to accept the gifts He gives us even through those stormy times.