Our lives seem to work much the same way. Yesterday’s plane crash outside Fremont is a prime example. It was a party…a celebration…a day for fun. And then this up-to-now trustworthy machine falls from the sky with six passengers aboard. Lives are snuffed out in an instant. The storm breaks loose.

It’s the normal first question in such an instance: Why did God let this happen? That’s a premise for a much longer discussion than a blog entry. There is another question we can tackle here, however: To what do you cling when life crashes and the storm hits?

The assumption, of course, is that there will be storms…no matter how sunny the current moment. And we know this assumption to be true by the experience of our own lives. Since our lives, then, are not unmitigated sweetness and light, we look for something constant…some solid rock…on which to lean when the storms come.

Back to the Gospel reading from two Sundays ago. “The rains fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house but it did not fall…for it had been founded on rock.” (Matthew 7:25)

There will be deep grief to overcome for those who lost their loved ones yesterday. But there is also One upon whom we may lean in such grief. Christ knows our sufferings for he has borne them in himself. He also stands as evidence that such sufferings, though they do their worst, do not have the last word for us. God has that last word…and it is life.

So we can enjoy the sun, and we can endure the storm. Whatever comes is no match for the One who walks with us.