Through the Storm

    First off- I'd like to dedicate my title to all the people undergoing hurricane Irene right now. It's passing through North Carolina and will soon head up all the way to New York. Streets are flooding, windows shattering and trees falling. When something like this happens, it's so easy for us to wonder what on earth God is doing. Is he just sitting up there chilling watching everyone affected by the disaster scramble around in fear? Maybe that's being too hard on him. I mean, he says he loves us right? So if he is with us, then why is he letting all these bad things happen. He promised good things to all who believe.
    We go through storms in our own lives all the time. Hurricanes that come tearing through, messing up our plans and destroying things we know and love. I had a plan going into college to rush a sorority. And I had my heart set on one. The I got asked back to the house for round two and was beyond excited- It felt right. I even got chills walking into the house. I convinced myself it's where God wanted me- until the next day when I got cut. I was crushed, and confused. I mean, I thought it was where God wanted me and it felt like some kind of joke that God had given in to me and then snatched it away as soon as I loved it.


"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11


   I heard this verse from everyone I complained to about me not getting what I wanted. "God has a plan for this". Obviously, I would rather have heard "God's going to make your plans come true". I didn't know what was best for me though, no matter how much I assumed I did. I ended up falling in love with one of the other sororities, and now I'm rooting for that one even more than I was for my initial first choice. God of course knew that the one he allowed me to be cut from wouldn't have suited me as well as the other. He wanted me to work somewhere else.

   No matter what obstacles are thrown at you in life, there is a reason God is allowing them. Whether it be as small as a college organization or as huge as a hurricane, God is preparing something greater than we can imagine or understand to come from it. Everything God does is with purpose, and as soon as we trust that his plan is better than ours, our eyes can be opened to his goodness and glory.