Struggle Bravely

I have received many weather alerts and emergency drills by

way of radio, television and now smart phone.  Tornado watches send me to my basement, despite the fact that I live in a tornado-free zone.  Hurricane warnings motivate me to run every item of dirty laundry so that I won't need electricity, for days.  I check weather maps each morning and anxiously refresh updates on false alarms.  No meteorological prediction has yet lived up to the hyperbole with which it was billed.

Friday morning, at 3 a.m. we were awakened to a pounding on our door by first responders, cautioning us that we should be ready to evacuate.  The house next door was surrounded by water, and it was still rising. 

Flash floods.

I hadn't heard any rain.  It certainly wasn't coming down.  But the water was coming up -- through the drought hardened lawns -- right before our eyes.  And twenty minutes after we packed a bag of necessities and moved our cars to higher ground, the alarms began to sound on the radio, television and smart phones.
While there are many interesting things to learn during a natural disaster about camaraderie, rescue boats and the time it takes to carry all the lower shelf books up to the second floor of our house, there are deep lessons for me. 
After the water had begun to subside, and the adrenaline faded, I kept hearing everyone echoing, "...it came up so fast."  
Grief and sorrow and sin and guilt are like that.  They come faster than the warnings.  They come in drought and they come during heavy rains.   They come in the middle of the night when I am fast asleep and they assault me with disaster that I struggle to wake up in order to comprehend. 

Wisdom sets me to work building the walls, defenses, and digging out the run-off basin -- in advance of the emergency.

Today, while the sun is shining and the crisp air is drying out the muddy remnants of the things we used to store in the basement, I leaf through the books as I permanently shelve them on higher ground, stopping on a bit of Thomas a Kempis.
“My Son, thou art never secure in this life, but thy spiritual armour will always be needful for thee as long as thou livest.
Thou dwellest among foes, and art attacked on the right hand and on the left. If therefore thou use not on all sides the shield of patience, thou wilt not remain long unwounded.
Above all, if thou keep not thy heart fixed upon Me with steadfast purpose to bear all things for My sake, thou shalt not be able to bear the fierceness of the attack, nor to attain to the victory of the blessed.
Therefore must thou struggle bravely all thy life through, and put forth a strong hand against those things which oppose thee."

Fifty years before Columbus wheedled some ships from the Spanish monarchy, a Dutch monk was shaping blocks that are as perfectly suited for disaster preparedness today as they were five hundred years ago.  
Because it always has come up so fast.