This morning’s word is The Eye at the Center.
Tomorrow is June 1. The Atlantic hurricane season opens.
Some of you have been in a hurricane. Not a metaphor. The wind. The water. The waiting. This word is not for you as an illustration. It is for you as a witness. The storm had an eye. You know this. That is the fact we start from.
For everyone else, here is what scientists know about the storm.
A hurricane is one of the largest things that happens on the surface of the planet. It can grow more than a thousand miles across. The wind reaches over 74 miles per hour at the boundary that defines it as a hurricane. The rain falls in feet. The storm surge climbs up the coast and carries houses with it.
The total energy a hurricane releases in a single day is staggering. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an average hurricane releases the heat equivalent of 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity. NASA frames the same fact differently. A hurricane releases as much energy in its life cycle as 10,000 nuclear bombs.
That is what is happening on the outside of a hurricane.
Now look at the inside. There is a quiet circle at the very center of the storm. Twenty to forty miles across. The wind drops. The clouds break. The sky often goes blue. That circle is called the eye.
The eye is not the absence of the storm. The eye is the still center inside it. The hurricane is still happening. The eyewall is still raging. The rainbands are still spinning. But inside the eye, for a few miles in every direction, there is peace.
Hold that image.
This morning the readings press on one teaching from four different angles. Ignatius writes from chains on his way to die in Rome and says every person carries one of two stamps. The Authority of Scripture plan says the new covenant writes GOD’s truth on the heart of every believer, from the least to the greatest. A widow in Zarephath has measured the last of her flour and oil and accepted death. A prophet arrives at her door before she lights the fire. Paul writes to a small church in Philippi from a prison cell and tells them not to be anxious about anything.
Four texts. One teaching.
There is a place that holds when the storm does not stop.
That place is not a feeling you summon. It is not a technique you practice. It is not a mindset you adopt. The eye is a Person. The eye is HIM. The still center inside everything that rages is Christ.
The hurricane is real. Some of you reading this woke up to a hurricane that has been in your life for years. A diagnosis. A grief. A marriage that has not yet healed. A child you cannot reach. A bill you cannot pay. A loss that has not yet softened. Tomorrow’s news is the literal storm season. Today’s word is for the storm you carry in your own kitchen.
The eye does not promise that the wind will stop. The eye is the One who walks toward you while the wind is still loud. The eye is the One who arrived at the widow’s door before she could measure the last handful. The eye is the One who wrote HIS truth on Paul’s heart in a prison cell. The eye is the One who knows your name when the rainbands sound like nothing else.
You do not have to escape the storm to find the eye. You only have to turn your face toward HIM.
In the United States alone, tropical cyclones since 1980 have caused more than 1.5 trillion dollars in damage and over 7,000 deaths. The storms are real. The damage is real. The grief of every family who has stood at a graveside after a hurricane is real. GOD does not cause every storm. GOD is in every storm.
That is the difference.
The season begins tomorrow. The Atlantic warms. The first names on the list are already chosen. Some of those storms will come ashore. Some will pass at sea. Some will leave damage that takes years to rebuild. Some of you will be in them.
The eye will be there.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
This morning’s Marc My Sabbath homily, Find the Eye, carries this word further. Read it here.