Early in the week, my corner of the Texas map experienced a jumbled mix of violent weather that the local paper called “a freakish storm.” It lasted only a few hours but before it relented, the storm wreaked havoc with torrential rains, tornadoes and massive traffic jams caused by flash flooding.

The morning after the storm brought the bluest sky in months, and the kind of crisp, cool air that so far, had been missing from November. Monday I couldn’t see ten feet in front of my face. Tuesday dawned with beauty as far as I could see. But it wasn’t the typical, still beauty of the calm after the storm.

The wind blew hard enough to suspend leaves and litter in swirling patterns over my head. The branches of the trees on my street waved and sighed, and a great many of the smaller ones let go their hold and tumbled to the street and sidewalk as I watched. After I came in, a branch from the huge oak outside my window cracked, and fell with a massive thud in the yard. It’s too big for me to carry off by myself. If it had hit me, it would have knocked me cold. But nothing about the day looked threatening, not like it had the day before.

The storm that paralyzed my city for a few hours on Monday was dangerous, and it damaged what you would expect a storm like that to damage. But on my street, Tuesday left more broken things – and Tuesday was lovely.

When life serves up freakish storms we hunker down in the safest places we know, and prepare for the worst. We get our game faces on, and resolve to ride out the chaos of a sudden illness or an ugly divorce, the death of a loved one or financial ruin. And mostly, we do. We manage. We get by. We survive. The days that trail disaster dawn bright and clear, and we breathe a big sigh of relief. “Maybe that’s the worst of it. Maybe I’ll be alright.”

We fool ourselves.

Branches fall on bright, blue days. Things get broken, even in the midst of beauty. “We live on holy ground,” writes Eugene Peterson. “We inhabit sacred space. This holy ground is subject to incredible violations. This sacred space suffers constant sacrilege. But no matter. The holiness is there, the sacredness is there.”

There are freakish storms you can track, and freakish winds you can’t predict. We are blessed and battered by both – and we control neither. That’s Someone else’s domain.

And they came to Him and woke Him up, saying “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And being aroused, He rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped and became calm. And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were fearful and amazed, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?” (Luke 8:24-25, NASB)