Hurricane Charley just came barreling through, lickety split, hell-bent on more destruction up the Carolina coast. It already devastated a large swath of Florida, laying waste to the region around Port Charlotte. Several people were killed when their mobile homes went airborne, others were lost in the ruins of stores and office buildings, and the damage is estimated in the billions.
We got off easy. During the night, the rain and wind picked up to gale force. Branches came crashing down from the tops of pines and live oaks, carrying with them great soaked beards of gray-green Spanish moss. The road out of here that leads through the woods is under water, and the electricity went out a couple of hours ago. But we have food and water, and it’s kind of nice to think that when the battery on this laptop gives out, I have a good excuse just to head for the dock and watch the tail end of the storm churn up the river. Considering that Charley is right now picking up speed and power as it sucks up heat from the coastal waters north of here, we really did get off easy.
As these things happen, the sun just came out. The sky suddenly turned deep blue on this August Saturday morning, and except for the debris on the ground you’d never know that half an hour ago we were being battered by a hurricane.
All morning long the wind kept the bird feeders swinging so hard we thought they might become projectiles. (Next time a hurricane comes through your neighborhood, you might want to stow the things in the garage). Now, in an instant, the feeders are alive with cardinals, chickadees, redwinged blackbirds, titmice, and a stray blue jay. The most striking sight, though, is the hummingbird feeder. Normally we spot only one or two of the little birds at a time, hovering like mini-helicopters while they gorge themselves on sugar-water. Right now a half dozen or more are fighting each other off to gain access to the red and yellow plastic flowers that provide them nourishment. It has been a long morning, what with the storm. These little creatures expend so much energy, they need to feed almost constantly. They’re hungry and a little frantic. Their internal mechanisms had been telling them that if they didn’t feed soon, they would die. They were completely at the mercy of the storm, their tiny, fragile bodies unable to withstand the gusts. They were forced to hunker down where they could, and wait. But then the storm passed and the sun came out.
Sometimes we are very much like those little humming birds. We find ourselves caught up in events or conditions that render us virtually helpless. I don’t want to push the simile too far, but it’s a fact that we often find ourselves in a storm that threatens our very existence. A pink slip appears in our in-box, or a frightening report comes back from the oncology lab; our teen-ager gets caught swapping drugs in school, or our spouse asks for a divorce. Or we’re threatened by some natural disaster, such as a hurricane. On a less dramatic scale, we may be losing a battle with depression, or struggling to quit, once and for all, our daily intake of alcohol or nicotine. Each one of us can add to this list our own personal dramas: sins that threaten to do us in, or outside forces we have no control over, which make us, like those humming birds, hunker down and hope it will pass. In the meantime, we’re hungry. And if we don’t soon get the nourishment we need, we may starve to death.
Often it seems that God leads us to the very edge of the abyss before reaching out to rescue us. In times of crisis, self-imposed or inflicted from outside, we feel threatened and abandoned. Ages-old questions go through our minds: Where is God? Why does He allow this to happen? And why to me? Am I being punished for some known or unknown sin? Or does God just not care?
The great 19th century philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard gave an eloquent answer to questions like these. At the close of one of his “Edifying Discourses” he declared something like this. “And so we may know that this same God, who by His hand led us through the world, now withdraws it… and opens His embrace to receive the longing soul.”
In order to open that embrace, God must first let go of our hand. For a moment—one that feels like an eternity—He must withdraw His strength and support, and we feel abandoned. Yet God never abandons those He loves; and by an unfathomable miracle of grace, He loves us all.
It may be a stretched simile, this likening of our experiences to hurricanes and humming birds. But to those who have peered down into the abyss, or hunkered down in dread of abandonment and spiritual starvation, it may still apply. So while we wait for the storm to pass and the sun to come out, we can hold on tight to the assurance that SK offered over a century and a half ago. If, for reasons beyond our comprehension, God withdraws His hand, it is only so that He might open His arms to embrace our longing souls.