Maybe you don’t like winter and what it brings?
But you can’t really hide from it or pretend that it is not happening.Hiding in your bedroom works for a while, but eventually you have to have to face facts.
It is winter, it is cold and it is going to last for a season.

With winter come those storms, just like our country has been seeing just this week.
They are part of the whole ‘winter’ package.
Storms are actually quite natural. And our natural human reaction is to try and get away from them.
One person I spoke to yesterday mentioned about flying out of one of our cities that same day. They felt some really bad turbulence just after take off, and then the pilot mentioned that the airport they had just left had been closed due the stormy weather.

A while a go a preacher who is a pilot explained a principal that he had learnt.
He said that when he saw a storm approaching along his flight path, 9 times out of 10 it was better to go directly through it than to try and avoid it.
Better the bumpy ride for a short time, than the long drawn out ride around it. It was apparently safer as well.

In our lives we face storms.
Sometimes we see them coming and sometimes we don’t.
But either way, you are presented with them and have to navigate your way through them.
Pretending that I am not in a storm of life has never worked that well for me. And I have learnt that approaching them head on is 9 times out of 10 the best way to go....and if you can accept this, sometimes they can be a whole lot of fun…

When I was quite young my family was on holiday in Queenstown.
We had a boat that we spend many a summer enjoying around the lake there.
One day the weather got really bad and the lake obviously changed into a churning, rough looking place. My dad decided we would still head back to the jetty downtown and so we set off.
It was really rough and we were being thrown around all over the place. I will never forget it though when the waves started getting bigger than our little boat. And I will never forget when my dad decided to go full throttle into one.
The boat went under the wave, or was it the wave went over our boat...either way there was a lot of water, a lot of noise, and my sister screaming!
I thought it was awesome. It was actually heaps of fun.
My dad seemed to enjoy the experience as well…

Sometimes the storms we face can be fun depending on how you look at them.
Even in the last few days, as soon as the hail fell, people rushed to the windows of our buildings to look.
Storms don’t last. The finish sometimes as quickly as they started.
They make you appreciate ‘normal’ weather.

If you are going through some storms of life right now…Don’t run and hide.
Face it head on and let God bring you safely through.
You may even get to enjoy some of it?

Proverbs 10:25
When the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone, but the righteous stand firm forever.

Something to think about...