I stood outside the church building this morning and watched a funnel cloud try to form with mixed emotions. Every time a strand of cloud changed direction to start spinning I got excited and then immediately weary. Why do I do that?

When you’re young, you get excited about storms (once you’ve survived a tornado and realized that death is not usually a symptom). The more violent, the better. It was as though God flexed and even though the power behind it was terrifying, it was still so beautiful that you couldn’t not be captivated by it.

Those clouds are dangerously unpredictable – do they hold hail? lightning? twisters? – but also a shade of deep, velvet that conveys majesty and mystery like nothing else in the world. The wind that sweeps through neighborhoods just before a storm is warning and foreboding, but it also carries a fragrance so refreshing and electric that you can’t help but breath deeply.

And when the sirens go off it’s game time.

But this morning I stood somewhere in the balance of excited but not too excited as though to approve (as though my approval meant anything), and thanking God as though to remind Him to please keep the house safe. It’s His house anyway, right? Nevertheless I ask and thank, and ward off “what ifs.”

And the next wind that passes over me isn’t just a natural wind-before-a-storm, it’s Him, and the fragrance He washes over me asks why I can’t just enjoy the storm with the faith of a child.

Why can’t I sit at a distance and enjoy His majesty and His beauty in what I perceive to the be the storm of our finances? Why can’t I sit on the front porch He’s provided, and breathe deep the breeze of His presence as He goes before the stormy economy? Why can’t I smile, wide-eyed as I anticipate what He will do with all that power billowing on the horizon?

Let go. Your approval doesn’t mean anything anyway. If I could turn off the sirens, it wouldn’t stop the storm. Choose faith, and let go of the rest.

Nahum 1:3, “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked.The LORD has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet.”