Counting on Your Crew When the Weather Gets Stormy

Who do you count on when the weather gets rough?  Do you have the right crew assembled for when the next storm system comes through?

At a recent Lumunos retreat, we looked at the story of Jesus calming the storm  A part of our conversation was about who constitutes our crew when we face the storms of life.  Story after story was told about the importance of having people with us when we face those times of trial.   

There is not one kind of crew member.  Often times we need a variety of friends when we are in heavy weather.  A few of the types of crew we identified on the retreat:

• the “I can be totally honest with you” friend

• the “Sure I’ll come over and cut your lawn because you are in a storm and have no time to attend to routine chores” friend

• the “I need to tell you as a friend that you have a storm brewing in your life and you don’t even see it coming” friend.  

• the “Do you want to pray about this?” friend

We also talked about the unexpected crew member, the person who is outside our preconceived notion of who are friends are.  But by the grace of God, they show up and help us get through the storm. 

Soon we will be in Holy week, which represented a kind of perfect storm for Jesus.  It is almost as if he experienced all the kinds of trials we face, concentrated in a few days.  I wonder if he had cultivated his crew in part as preparation for this storm.  Some of these crew members let him down in big ways.  But he too experienced the grace of a stranger stepping out of the crowd to help carry his cross. 

Question:  As we head into Holy Week:  What kind of crew member do you need for a current or upcoming storm?  What kind of crew member are you called to be for another?

by Doug Wysockey-Johnson

(To comment on this blog, simply click the title of the blog, scroll to bottom, and write your comment in the box provided. You can post anonymously, or using your name by typing it at the end of your post.)