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Day by day, even moment by moment, the storms roll in… lightning and thunder crash around us, hail falls like bullets, and the rain soaks us through to the bone.

And with those storms come fear and anxiety, despair, pain and loss.

It’s easy to see why the disciples wanted Jesus to calm the storm… and of course, He did, but not before the disciples were likely made to endure the worst of the storm seemingly on their own while Jesus took a nap.

Someone said to me recently that they wished that God would take away the worst bits of the storm — the thunder and lightning, and definitely the hail, and maybe just let it rain.

After all, it’s the rain that waters the earth and fills the tanks, and revives the grass and plants and crops, and quenches the thirst of animals and humans alike.

Except that there's more to the story.

An old lucerne farmer told me once that he grows his best crops during thunderstorms. He said it’s because the lightning activates the nitrogen in the air and soil, which helps to produce a better crop and a greater yield.

In other words, the very things that make a storm so scary are the very things that are designed to make us grow.

When we’re in the midst of the storm, it’s lovely to think that God might just let the rain fall, and remove the scary bits.

But if God does that, then we miss the opportunity to grow stronger, to produce a greater yield, to become the person he designed and created us to be.

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