The Tempest is Raging

This past weekend we went to St. Louis to go to the temple.  The temple is a special opportunity because sometimes answers to prayers come so easily there.  There's things I've been praying about and that I hoped to find answers for there, but nothing this time.  Nevertheless, it was so nice to go to the temple.

On the drive home, Chad started singing some hymn and I joined in and shortly after Liam began his chorus along with us (ya, we're weird like that).  Well, the singing of this one hymn turned into a sort of game.  I'd randomly flip to a hymn (thank you iphone hymn app) and if we knew it, we'd sing it.  We made a great trio and we sure could dramatize some of those songs.  (You should of heard us on the chorus of 'Master, the Tempest is Raging'!)  In fact, 'Master, the Tempest is Raging' was the hymn that really stuck with me then and that has stayed with me these past few days.  Not because of our memorable rendition of it.  It was the second verse.  I'd never paid attention to it.

Master, with anguish of spirit

I bow in my grief today.

The depths of my sad heart are troubled. 

Oh, waken and save, I pray!

Torrents of sin and of anguish

Sweep o'er my sinking soul,

And I perish! I perish! dear Master.

Oh, hasten and take control!

Never before had I been able to relate with the disciples on the storm tossed ship.  I've felt so urgent as did they.  Like them, I wondered why the Lord wasn't responding with more earnestness.  

Sunday, the night the tornado hit Joplin, we were under a tornado watch here.  The sky was brewing with storm clouds.  And the lyrics to the song came to my mind again.  And now, as I watch the after effects of this tornado, the chorus echos in my mind once more.

The winds and the waves shall obey they will:

Peace, be still.

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea

Or demons or men or whatever it be,

No waters can swallow the ship where lies

The Master of ocean and earth and skies.

They all shall sweetly obey thy will:

Peace, be still; peace, be still.

They all shall sweetly obey thy will:

Peace, peace, be still.

Now, like those disciples of old, I see that the Lord knows all and has the power to still the storm...in his own timing. 

(Below are pictures I took the night of the storm.)