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Tornado Terror

by Bryan Gibson

June 23, 2011

It’s been one of the deadliest tornado seasons on record. No need to rehash the details here, because if you’ve been following the news, and especially if you live in one of the affected areas, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t presume to know God’s precise role in these events, but I do know what He wants you to learn from them.

Life is fragile, uncertain, and all too brief. “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). And it may vanish a lot sooner than you think, because that tornado that missed you this time may kill you the next. Don’t take tomorrow for granted, for it may never come. Prepare today to meet the Lord in judgment (Luke 12:20), and if you know someone else who’s not prepared, help them get ready too.

Sin messed up everything. Death and destruction, whether from tornadoes or any other cause, didn’t even exist in the beginning, not until Adam and Eve sinned, were driven from the garden and denied access to the tree of life (Genesis 3:17-24; Romans 8:20-22).

Rest your hope, then, on the one place where there is no sin. Those horrible scenes of devastation should make you long for a place where nothing but “righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13), a place therefore free of death and destruction (Revelation 21:4), a place where you can once again eat freely from the tree of life (Revelation 2:7; 22:1-2, 14).

Trust in God, not in yourself. Hard to feel more powerless than when a powerful tornado is bearing down on your house, and then if you do survive, to go outside and see everything that man has built reduced to rubble. “Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). No doubt many have leaned on Him more in recent days than they have in a long time.

Cling to the things that endure. Many lost everything they own, things they spent a lifetime accumulating. Calamity has taught us again that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15), but instead in a relationship of faithfulness to the Lord, a foundation that cannot be swept away by any storm. “Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock” (Matthew 7:24-25).

Repent, or perish! The folks who perished in these tornadoes—there’s no reason to believe they were any worse sinners than those who survived (Luke 13:1-5). But once they did perish, their eternal fate was sealed. They will either receive eternal life or eternal death. Now, suppose you had perished in one of these tornadoes. Would you have perished eternally? Would you have been ready to meet the Lord? If you have not repented of your sins, then the answer is NO!