The beauty that remains

In a four day span from April 25-28, over 300 tornadoes touched down across the South and Midwest.  You know it’s bad when weather patterns get named, and this 4 day stretch of funnels and terror is now referred to as the 2011 Super Outbreak.  As a result, 317 people lost their lives, and billions of dollars worth of property vanished with the wind.  Adding insult to injury, another F5 storm hit Joplin, Missouri, last week and took another 125 lives with twice that number still missing.  And that’s just 2 of the many storms that have brutalized our country in 2011.  In fact, since the beginning of the year, we have seen 875 confirmed tornadoes in the United States.

Storms often come like that, fast and furious, and they almost always bring devastation.  Thankfully, that’s not all they bring.

Storms bring clarity.  Granted, they aren’t the preferred method for stripping away all the things that don’t matter, but it is a wonderful gift that many times gets overlooked in the aftermath of the storm.  Those of us watching the coverage from a distance think about how hard it would be to lose a house or a car, and yet stand a father next to his family in front of a pile of rubble that used to be their home, and he’ll talk little about what they’ve lost and much about what they haven’t.  He’ll say how thankful he is to have not lost what matters the most, and he’ll say it with conviction because, even though he knew that his family mattered more than the stuff, surviving the storm has helped him know it even more deeply in his soul.  I know this reality because I’ve lived through storms and come out on the other side with a much keener perspective.  You’ll never see more clearly than you will the days after you’ve been through the storms of life.

Storms bring renewal.  It’s the power of a clean slate.  The chance to start again, and to determine to build better the next time.  Even those who have lost loved ones, though they grieve deeply now, will once again love deeply, and likely much more deeply than before.  They will find that they cherish moments that they barely noticed before, and they will live more intentionally in those moments.

Maybe most importantly of all, storms bring hope.  We’re never more open to new people, ideas, or truths than when we’re hurting, and those who have suffered at the hands of a storm – whether physical or spiritual – are looking for hope more than ever before.  It should not be surprising that crosses always seem to pop up at storm sites.  Drive enough country roads and you’ll see small white crosses marking the site of fatal accident.  Look through the myriad of images from the recent tornadoes and you’ll find the same on I did that is featured above.  Who can forget the two steel beams found among the rubble and debris after 9/11?

Why does the image of a cross turn a picture of tornado damage into a breathtaking thing of beauty?  Why did two steel beams in the exact proportions to a cross filled workers and Americans with so much hope that it would eventually have a permanent place at Ground Zero and come to be called the Ground Zero Cross?  What is it about the cross that symbolizes hope, and why do we seem so drawn to it in times of pain and crisis?

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians 2:13-15 – emphasis added)

As much as we want to try to fight it, deny it, and sue to have it covered up at graduation ceremonies, the cross is an enduring symbol of victory.  It stands and boldly proclaims to all who would hear that there is nothing that can triumph over the goodness and grace of God’s mercy poured out through the sacrificial death of His Son.  When the storms have ripped through and shredded everything we had put our hopes in, seeing the symbol of the cross reminds us that there is a beauty that remains, and it’s message is a beacon to those who have been brought to their knees by the cruel winds in this world:

Look up.  God is bigger.  He is not shaken. He is not thwarted. He is not far away.  He knows your pain, because He paid to deliver you from it, and in all the chaos around you, He is the beauty that remains, the One Who longs to restore hope and perspective and salvation to your life.

That is the beauty that remains.

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