One summer storm years ago turned unusually violent. In the northeast our weather is not prone toward generating tornados. However in this storm as the front moved in, the wind suddenly reversed and started blowing in the opposite direction. In the midst of this sudden shift in the direction of the wind, trees in our back woods could be heard popping and snapping. The next day’s inspection revealed that a small tornado, or microburst had touched down behind our house and decimated a cluster of trees, leaving a circle of still standing white pines overlooking a tangle of twisted, snapped trees and limbs. 

A decade or more has gone by and the circle of pines remains overlooking the now overgrown, rotting tangle of trunks and branches. Standing in the middle of the circle, I look up and feel dwarfed by the stately pines surrounding me on all sides. I call this realm the council of the Almighty. It is a place I often go to and lift my head and my voice to inquire of God. Why is my friend languishing in her illness? What am I to do with a wayward child? What am I to learn from this difficulty? What is on your heart God for our nation? For the hurt and hurting of this broken world?

Often my questions resemble the landscape on the forest floor all around me. They are littered with dead branches and tangled vines and broken trunks, truly a ghastly sight. Life is sometimes a ghastly sight. But I lift my eyes up and the council of the Almighty stands above it all, verdant, stately and strong. I am comforted and quieted by the lofty pines all around me. “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” 

I don’t know that I have ever had an immediate answer to my struggling questions in the council of the Almighty, but that is okay. Merely stating them and looking up is an answer. The trees are unbowed and unaffected by the disorder below. Like the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 46, when I am stilled and quieted, I know that He is God.” He is exalted above the earth.” Shalom can be present even though I stand in the midst of the debris of this fallen world. 

What about you? Is there a place where you sense the order of the Almighty amidst the chaos of the world? Is it in looking up into a starry sky, whose Creator knows each luminary by name? Is it beside the ocean where its vastness and the rhythm of its lapping waves remind you of His immeasurable faithfulness? The answers may or may not come but the assurance that He is above it all may be all that we need