Chase away the clouds

A devotional series inspired by sights in Kauai
Storms hang over even paradise. Our four-day visit to beautiful Kauai in the Hawaiian islands came at the end of a series of tropical storms, treating us to gray skies, rain, and mud. One morning, my husband had to take off his shoes and wade through several inches of standing water to reach our rental car in the hotel parking lot.  These clouds lingered through the day.  As we explored nearby sights, I could have dwelled on the gray clouds. Instead, I marveled at the lush green vegetation that the clouds sustained. Back home in parched eastern Washington state, just months earlier, a scary summer of wildfires included one that torched a neighborhood just a mile away from ours.

The Kauai sky that day reminded me of the “Lit’l Abner comic strip,” which ran in newspapers across the nation during 1934-1977.  One of the minor characters, named “Joe Btfspik” (the comic artist “pronounced” it like a rude sound), wandered the story line with a perpetual rain cloud over his head.  The world’s worst jinx, everywhere he went, something bad happened.  It was an amusing caricature, but, sadly, I know people who live in a constant “cloud” of negatives. God stretches me in trying to help them look for the sun that’s trying to break through.  Some of their “weather reports” go like this:

 “The sun will never shine on me like it does others.” This “poor-me” outlook imagines that people reject them because they have some terrible flaw. The truth is that we’re all imperfect, but we’re people in progress as we draw nearer to the radiance of Christ, whom Malachi 4:2 called by the prophetic label, “the sun of righteousness.” One source of this distortion is popular culture, which uses media savvy as a measure of personal worth. Interestingly, a recent study by the University of Houston found a link between depression and Facebook-“lurking.” If virtual comparisons foster “nobody appreciates me” reactions, it’s time to quit the social media.

 “That thunderhead might produce a terrible storm that destroys my home!” Fear and exaggeration are not of God. Caution is. Near Kauai’s coastal areas, we noticed huge sirens ready to warn people of coming tsunamis.  But gloomy people always think the worst, revealing their fears that God won’t help them if it does happen. One published counselor suggested that such people may be reading about, listening to, or watching the news too much. All these media sources tend to emphasize the worst of any disaster. Reporters on live media (radio, TV) have a practiced, intense tone in their voices, adding to the sense of urgency. The counselor suggested: quit your news intake for a while until you can get your what-if’s under control.

“My life is just a big fog bank.  I’m hopeless and stuck.” Where I live, we can expect gray, foggy, frozen days in January and February.  It can be quite depressing unless we choose to find spots of cheer. Some simple things I do: wear colorful clothes, open the curtains, eat healthy, and connect with other people. Bringing order to the physical clutter where I live also helps.  But emotionally fog-bound people aren’t proactive in simple lifestyle things. They’re paralyzed by “I can’ts,” instead of asking God to help them overcome excuses. They’re so down on themselves that they may interpret a harried store clerk’s reaction as a snub on them.  Too much emotional analysis can lead to behavioral paralysis. Their “fog” may be a clue to a chemical imbalance in their bodies that needs medical treatment. But there’s also a spiritual aspect. David had this “future” perspective for his “fog” times, a phrase repeated several times in Psalms 42 and 43: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God!”

Hopeless, fictional rain-cloud Joe Btfspik didn’t enjoy what believers have for life’s storms: a God who promised: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2, emphasis added). By the way, we did enjoy some blue skies before flying home across the ocean. As an old Gospel song puts it, “Sunshine after the rain.”