Protection From Severe Storm Through Prayer

I continue to be grateful for everything we are learning as students of Christian Science at this church. The testimonies tonight about weather made me think specifically about how grateful I am that we’re taught to know and expect that the weather, like everything else, needs to express God’s control and dominion, and that’s something I hadn’t really known before I found independent Christian Science.

Anyhow, I had a really interesting experience with this about a month or so ago. We woke up in the middle of the night to a pretty violent storm. There had been a really crazy, close-by lightning strike that woke us up, woke the dog up, and we were pretty startled by it. We also heard a storm siren going off in the distance as well, one of those tornado sirens they have dotted around the area. I checked my phone’s weather app, and there was a big red band of storms on the radar, and it looked like this thing was going to be going on for a couple of hours. At first, I was thinking, “Well geesh, should we go down to the storm shelter, or what should we do?” But then I thought, “No – I’m not going down to that storm shelter, this is my opportunity to express God’s control and dominion over everything.” I felt strongly that I had a right to expect that this thing wasn’t just going to blow through and disturb me and my neighbors or cause damage or anything like that. So, I hunkered down and started to pray about it.

One of the things that came to me to handle was the idea of excess, because we had been getting a LOT of rain – it had been a very rainy spring and early summer and we really didn’t need any more rain at the moment and we certainly didn’t need it the way it was coming down in waves. So, I worked with the idea that God expresses Himself in perfect balance, sending us exactly what we need and not nothing that we don’t need – there’s never too much or too little. Then another thought that came is that God owns every channel, including the weather. He governs the weather, and animal magnetism couldn’t work through the weather to bring a lack of peace or destruction or anything like that to our area. I also remembered how Jesus calmed the storm and how he was at peace, he was not impressed by the craziness going on around him, and he spoke with authority to that storm – he said, “Peace, be still.” All these different things started to flood into my thought, and I got this very strong sense of peace about God’s control and dominion over everything. Well I probably worked that way for 20-30 minutes until the sense of peace was so clear that I felt good enough to go to sleep, and things had died down substantially outside – there were no more lightning strikes, the rain had greatly subsided and the siren had turned off. I was able to fall asleep and when I woke up in the morning, there was no damage in our yard, no evidence of any sort of tornado touchdowns or anything like that – I heard nothing about that in the local news or anything from neighbors. I was just very grateful for that experience, so grateful to feel that sense of dominion and knowing God’s power over everything. It strengthened my faith in God’s government.