Shelter is good!

We recently had the most amazingly "windy" storm pass through our neighborhood. I don't mind a breeze, but this was a wind! As Winnie the Pooh would say, it was "a blustery day!" Rain is good and I usually don't mind it. Everything smells clean and fresh after the rain. I love a good snow storm, especially if I don't have to go anywhere. But the wind scares me a little bit. Maybe because we have 11 really tall pine trees around our home. I don't know, maybe it's because sometimes I feel like I'm in "The Wizard of Oz", and the house is going to lift right up and blow away. It's a scary time to me. Some time during the middle of this windy storm, I was thinking how blessed we are to have a home. Our home has protected us from all kinds of weather. It has kept us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and dry when there's rain or snow. We can lock the door and feel safe. We can put on our pj's, and wander around, and no one cares. While I was thinking about how blessed we are to have a home, it hit me that our home has sheltered us from other storms too. These storms that are not always visible, but can be every bit as devastating.  These storms come along unexpectedly. If we were to think of our home and the structure of it, different things go together to make it. There are beams, 2X4's, sheet rock, tile, brick, siding, a roof, and windows, etc. All of these things, and more, are what makes the home solid and strong, but not indestructible. In the same way, there are different things that make our home solid and strong. Things we can't see. The first would be desire. To desire a strong and solid home would motivate anyone to do whatever it takes to make it that way. Love, maybe even charity, would be very important. Patience, and compassion. Kindness, sharing what we have. Even selflessness. Hard work. No one wants to work alone. I believe that a family, to be solid and strong, must believe in God. If we believe in God, we want to live a life of devotion to Him. To give glory to Him by the way we live, and act, as a family, and a people. If we build a solid and strong home in this way, it can protect us from the storms that will come. Storms like: loss of a job, wayward children, substance abuse, etc. Some of the storms we may deal with are huge! Some are just the daily struggles that we all have. They can wear you down too. That doesn't mean we won't be a little scared from time to time, when we hear or see the storms around us. We will know that we have done what it takes to have a strong home. We will believe, and know we are safe.