Weathering It Together

Wednesday night, a small but strong thunderstorm rolled through our neighborhood. It came fast, made tons of noise, and then left us sitting in the dark, not to mention the heat.

As usual, we assumed the power would be back on soon. It was about 6:00 PM, and surely the electricity knew we had things to do. But as the evening turned toward bedtime, we realized this was going to be a longer outage.

By then, it was too late to make other arrangements. So we opened the windows, brought the kids downstairs, and decided to weather the hot night together.

We made intermittent trips to the driveway to sit in the truck’s A/C and charge phones. We made jokes about needing to eat all the popsicles we had just bought. We kept in touch with our neighbors — who were awake and miserably hot, too — through our HOA’s Facebook page. And for some reason, we even put our kindergartener in charge of one of the flashlights.

Was it fun? Not exactly. Would we like to do it again? Absolutely not. But we made it. And somehow, being together made a rough night feel survivable.

Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” We usually think of that in worship or prayer, but maybe it is also true in ordinary moments of endurance: families gathered in dark living rooms, neighbors checking on each other, church members carrying one another through hard nights.

Because some storms are easier to weather when we do not weather them alone.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Jon