Michael Harrison's e-devotion

This past week has been one most of us have etched in our minds.  This hurricane, Florence, has left devastation not to far from our doors. After the coming to shore of the storm much more rain left our region crippled.  Let’s continue to pray all impacted by Florence and the storm’s impact. We are bombarded by questions of why does God allow difficult things to happen.  Hurricanes bring wide destruction.  These storms also bring some questions about our faith and anxiety. We have a choice with how we respond to the storms and struggles, but the largest piece I want to remind you of is that we have a choice to let our situations control us or we can control us.  Do we allow fear or faith to be the strongest factor in our lives? Dealing with the unknown or what we cannot control is tough, and we can know, if we choose to, that God is ALWAYS in control.  He has the storms.  He has the situations....

The storms are most likely headed in our direction.  Yet Hurricane Florence has a plan of it’s own.  It could go north or south of us.  It could get stronger or might even weaken. No matter what happens to the storm we need to make some choices about how we will deal with the storms of life.  That is the literal storms that cause damage and wreck our lives. That is the many other kinds of storms that cross our path as well.  How will we deal with the storms? Mark 5:17 NLT And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone. Maybe they were scared of what they saw.    Maybe the herdsman were furious about losing their pigs (you might know the story; of not go read it).    There could have been a number of reasons for asking Jesus to leave them alone.    Another story from the time Jesus was when He was in the boat with His disciples when a storm came up....