Navigating the Storms of Lifeნიმუში

Swept Out to Sea

Wherever in the world you’re reading this, you’ll probably agree it’s been a stormy few years for our planet – politically, economically, environmentally – and each of us personally has likely been hit by the storms of life – relationally, financially, in our career space, or in terms of physical or mental health.

No one’s exempt from difficulty. We all go through storms – and we all want to know why – but in this life we won’t necessarily find the answers. So, I don’t want to give you cheer-up clichés. I want to take an honest look at what God’s Word teaches us about coping with adverse weather conditions as we make our way through life on earth.

The word ‘navigate’ means to find the way to get to a place when you’re travelling. We’ve come to use it to mean how we find a way through difficult stuff in life. Perhaps, right now, life’s not plain sailing. You’re in a storm. You’re pretty confident you’ll survive, but you still need to somehow move through the storm. Or perhaps you’re in a storm you know is unlikely to clear this side of eternity. You’re carrying something that, barring a miracle, you’ll probably carry for life. You know everything will be ok in the very end – because for us the end is just the beginning. But until you get to the very end of life earthside, you want to ride the storm and ride it well, right?

Let’s consider three big reasons why we find it hard to navigate the storms of life.

The first is our expectations, which are too often skewed or misinformed. Jesus said here on earth we’d definitely go through tough times, yet we somehow believe God owes us uninterrupted fair weather. When we don’t expect the storms to hit, we spend a lot of emotional energy being offended by them because we feel entitled to a better deal.

The second reason we may navigate storms ineffectively is our lack of preparation. Jesus used the analogy of building a house on solid rock to illustrate the wisdom of being storm-ready. To our detriment, we’re too quick to ignore the still small voice – or the blaring alarm – of warning. We’re too proud or too lazy to prepare for difficulty, thinking, ‘It’ll never happen to me…’

The third reason we may not navigate storms particularly well is because we succumb to fear-induced self-preservation. When storms come, we bunker down and protect ourselves and maybe those closest to us, but this is a blinkered, ineffective strategy for dealing with suffering.

In summary: we need help to navigate the storms of life because we don’t expect the weather to change, and when it does, we become indignant, cynical, or disillusioned. Or we don’t navigate the storms – they just wash us away – because we’re unprepared. Or we ride out the storms in hiding, hoping eventually they’ll blow over and there will be something left of our lives. But there’s a better way. With Jesus – our true north when we’re swept out to sea – we can learn to confidently navigate even unimaginable suffering so that instead of retreating in fear we can move forward with hope.