Love Like a Hurricane

“He is jealous for me,
Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.”

--“How He Loves”  by David Crowder Band

“The Lord does whatever pleases him,

    in the heavens and on the earth,
    in the seas and all their depths.

He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth;

    he sends lightning with the rain
    and brings out the wind from his storehouses.” – Psalm 135:5-7

In the verses above, the psalmist affirms that God controls all of nature. When I read those words, I can clearly imagine God’s awesome power manifested as one of the thunderous storms with which I am all too familiar. But what about His love? Is it really, as the song says, like a hurricane? Last night I thought about all this as I watched towering trees behind my house bend while tropical storm Gordon’s winds whipped through their branches. In the blustery onslaught, the trees had two options: they could break or they could bend. Those are the same choices I have when confronted by God’s overwhelming power and love. I can stubbornly try to stand tall as life’s hurricane winds blow against me and wind up battered and bruised, spiritually if nothing else. Or I can bend beneath God’s will, knowing His love is the force that motivates all of His actions, even the creation of storms. Once I humbly surrender and focus on God’s unfailing love, my trials disappear, “eclipsed by glory” and the knowledge of “how great [His] affections are for me.”