Devotional.
Last week we were away on holiday in Dorset, and one morning we drove down to West Bay, a little fishing town tucked under the golden cliffs of the Jurassic Coast.
I think we caught the tail end of a storm, because the wind coming off the sea was something else. The kind of wind that you can't breathe in when you're facing straight into it.
We let the children out onto the shingle, and I stood watching Jesse (who's one and a half) try to make his way across the beach.
He would lean forward, set his little face, and push, and the wind would simply hold him there. Sometimes it pushed him back a step. He was working so hard to move and going almost nowhere, until eventually he just reached up for my hand.
We crossed the beach together after that, him leaning into me, both of us braced against the same wind.
So often, when life turns stormy, the only prayer I can find is, "Lord, make it stop." Calm the wind. Still the sea. Change the weather. There is nothing wrong with that prayer. Jesus Himself calmed a storm for frightened friends.
But sometimes the wind keeps blowing. The diagnosis stands. The bills still come. The grief does not lift on our timetable. If calm is the only answer we are willing to accept, we can miss the quieter thing God is doing right in the middle of it.
He does not always promise to remove the storm. He promises to hold us up inside it.
That is what Isaiah heard the Lord say to a frightened people: "Don't you be afraid, for I am with you... I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness."
Not, I will end every hardship, but I will uphold you. I will be the hand you reach for. I will be your strength when your own runs out.
So if you are bracing against something today, leaning hard into a wind that will not let up, you do not have to cross it on your own strength. You were never meant to.
Reach up. The same God who can calm any storm has promised to be your strength inside this one.
He is my strength in the storm, and He can be yours too.
Prayer.
Lord, You are my strength in the storm, holding me steady when everything is chaos, giving me power to stand when the wind should knock me down.
The storm is raging around me right now, relentless, exhausting, showing no signs of stopping, and my own strength ran out a long time ago.
Teach me to draw on Your strength when mine is depleted, to tap into power beyond myself, to find in You what I don't have within me to keep going.
I can't calm this storm, can't make it stop, can't even see when it will end, but I don't have to weather it on my own strength because You are my strength in it.
Help me stop trying to be strong enough on my own and start leaning into the strength You offer, to admit my weakness so Your power can sustain me through what I cannot survive alone.
Remind me that You haven't promised to remove every storm but You've promised to be my strength in each one, that Your power is available right now, in this storm, for me.
Give me courage to face the storm knowing I'm not facing it in my own strength, peace that comes from trusting Your power, endurance that flows from You not from me.
Let me stand firm today because He is my strength in the storm, held steady by power that doesn't run out, sustained by strength that isn't my own.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.
