Were you around for the storms that ripped through the area July 27?
Two rounds of strong storms swirled through the Chicago area, dropping damaging hail and spawning seven tornadoes in the metro area.
Even areas without tornadoes reported winds of 80 to 100 mph, mostly in the south suburbs.
Our neighborhood was fortunate; the winds were strong enough to push the pouring rain sideways, but only relatively small branches came off the trees and a few lighter things were blown around the yard.
But north of us, away from the worst of the weather, there were large trees down across roads and on top of cars. In the hardest hit areas, trees were down by the score, and tree trunks or large tree limbs damaged homes, cars, businesses, you name it. That’s all in addition to the loss of mature trees that had stood for decades, providing cooling shade and exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen in the air.
Then, as suddenly as the storms arrived, they were gone. The morning of July 27 was oppressively hot and humid, but calm; in the evening, after the storms were gone, temperatures became comfortable, maybe even cool enough for a light sweater.
It wasn’t something you could have predicted at around 3 p.m., when I looked outside and it was dark. As in, it looked like the sun had set more than five hours early, and I had to turn the lights on.
That, of course, is the way of storms, as the Gospel writers knew. The disciples were not expecting the storm that blew up in the Sea of Galilee and scared them enough they woke him up in Chapter 4 of the Gospel of St. Mark.
Maybe having Jesus there with them made it easier to call on him, even if he did seem annoyed at having his sleep disturbed. In the Gospel, Jesus tells the wind and the water to be quiet, and then questions the disciples about their apparent lack of faith.
To me, though, it appears that they had faith that Jesus would — and could — help them. It’s the same kind of faith that I have when a crisis suddenly appears, when there is a tragedy that I wasn’t expecting, when things suddenly take a turn for the worse.
That’s when I want to call on Jesus, like the disciples did, and ask him to make everything better. To stop the wind from snapping the tree trunks and keep the rain from flooding the basement.
It doesn’t work like that, of course. Sometimes the bad thing happens, and it’s not OK and feels like it will never be OK. It makes me feel like I would have some choice words for Jesus as my world, or the world of people I love, broke apart and I saw Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat.
I wonder how he would react. Would he chide me for my lack of faith, for me wanting to avoid suffering, for myself and especially for my loved ones? For wanting, at the very least, to have some predictability, to be able to see the storm coming and prepare?
Maybe. But I also know that Jesus would still love me, still love the world that God created, fallen though it is, with all of its cruelty and violence, but also with all of its beauty and love.