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.

It’s 6:01 EST on May 21, 2011, and I’m still here.  My guess is, so are you, and so is Harold Camping…for now.  But among others, I can think of three things that aren’t: the hope of many who put their faith in a man who was a lying snake, the money that they gave him, and the credibility of the church in the eyes of many who still need Jesus.

Now, it’s time to restore at least 2 of those, and as sad as it is that some people may have lost entire life savings over this garbage about the Rapture happening today, I think the money was the least valuable of the three.  Thankfully, it’s the only one that can’t be recovered.

First, hope has to be restored for those who believed Camping and now find themselves feeling like people on the outside looking in.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

They had hope.  Granted, they had hope in a man, and worse than that, a man’s interpretation of the Bible that clouded their own and the years of church tradition.  But the proverb makes no distinction between whether the hope was wrongly or rightly placed, just that it once was and now isn’t.  And when we hope for something and don’t receive it, our hearts – the very core of who we are – grow sick.  I hurt for the numbers of people who are sick right now, and are wondering what comes next.

The best part of this verse for those who have lost hope?  That wonderful, three-lettered word “but.”  If you had put all your faith in an event that didn’t happen, that word means your story isn’t over.  6:01 does not define you. There is still more to be learned, to be seen. There is life to find, and it comes through seeing your longings fulfilled.  My guess is that you long for truth, trust, a shoulder to cry on and arms to hold you tightly as you weather what you feel now. Doubt. Betrayal. Anger. Embarrassment.  In a word, you long for Jesus.

Times like these make me wish that Jesus would really show up and let the hurting see Him for who He is instead of risking it all by letting man distort the image.  Camping distorted it, and if we’re not careful, how we respond now will further distort it.  There is no doubt that restoring credibility in the eyes of an unbelieving world – which now has even more reason to not believe – will be a long road.  But ultimately, it begins and ends with holding up the truth.  I say we start here:

I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds. (Jeremiah 23:21-22)

How do we restore credibility in the eyes of the world and hope to the hearts of the sick? We shut up if we haven’t been with Jesus. We absolutely refuse to speak our agenda over His truth, and we resolve to become a church that says less, but says it with more honesty, authenticity, and compassion.

I believe that this is the church the hurting long to see. A simpler church, a real church, a church full of confidence and power in God’s word.  If we will become that church, I believe we’ll find ourselves saying less to more people than we used to, and we’ll begin to see hope restored in their lives.

So now, let us begin.

I’ve always been fascinated with the day between what the Christian faith calls Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.  Saturday is the “odd man out.”  The day without a special name, with no significant meaning.  Friday has the sacrificial death of Christ for sinners and Sunday has His glorious resurrection in victory over death and the grave.  Saturday, it would seem, has nothing.  But I think it may have more than we realize…

I think it’s a day that many of us can relate to.  A day that feels suspended, stuck.  A day that is partly cloudy and partly sunny.  A day filled with doubt and hope, when our emotions run the gamut and toss us like rag dolls.

It is the day after what felt like the end, and the day before what we hope to be the beginning. It is the day that we are alone with our thoughts, our emotions, and the broken pieces of a heart that had believed with everything it had in something – or someone – that died yesterday.

Saturday is a suspension bridge between the end and the beginning.

This is the day when things happen in us which must happen privately in order for them to be revealed publicly.  What Jesus was doing on this day as He was between His death and resurrection has been debated by wise scholars for centuries, but one thing is clear: He was doing something.  Jesus didn’t spend Saturday sitting in the tomb twiddling His resurrecting thumbs waiting for the angel to move the stone.  It was a day of hidden activity, when the seed that had fallen into the ground was growing under the ground so that it could burst out of the ground.

For you and me, this day represents the time we spend in preparation of the beginning.  The beginnings are different for us all – perhaps the launch of a new business, the first day on a new job, the wedding day of a couple in love, or the re-enrollment in college for another degree – but the principle of preparation is consistent.  You get ready on Saturday, because you know that Sunday is coming.

Maybe you feel stuck, like your entire life is on hold.  You’re waiting, wrestling, wondering.  Perhaps you need to hear the message of Saturday, and know that whatever ended for you in the past does not define what you will be when your life begins again.  You were made for God’s glory, and He is working in you, behind the scenes, preparing you for a new day when the broken pieces of Friday will fall into place on Sunday.

And it all happens on the day when we feel caught between the end and the beginning.

What is God preparing you for?

What areas of your life need to be developed more in order for your new beginning to be successful?

How can you take advantage of the time spent waiting?