In the Event of a Hurricane

The city where the sun is always shining …that is Cabo San Lucas, Mexico!  People don’t go to Cabo wondering if it will rain.  It rarely rains.  Cabo is known for its climate.  While it is hot, hot, hot, the weather is also dry.  Located in the desert at the tip of the Baja, it is known for its sunny days, beautiful beaches and amazing guacamole!   Storms rarely hit Cabo San Lucas.  They just never happen…

On September 17, 2014 what ‘never happens’ became a reality.   Hurricane Odile, a category 3 hurricane, hit Cabo hard.  The center of the storm went right over Cabo leaving behind damage and destruction the city had never before known.  The airport was destroyed, roads and bridges were torn up, buildings were taken down, people’s homes were demolished.

The storm they thought would never happen had come, and it had taken them down.

Much of Cabo has been rebuilt, restored.  Only a few buildings remain under repair now two years later. New people have moved into town, men and women who did not live through the storm.  To them, the storm was someone else’s story.  It didn’t really affect them.  You talk to them about the storm and they say, ‘Must have been terrible…’

But for those who lived through the storm, those whose homes were destroyed because of the hurricane, the storm is part of their story.  They have a different perspective.   You talk to them, and they say ‘Never again.’

For two years now these people have been working to restore what was damaged in a storm that others don’t remember.  These people will never forget.  They have invested every day, every peso, trying to build back what the storm tore down.  Those who survived the storm have a different perspective.   They are doing things differently now.

The priority is no longer how do we fix what is broken.  It’s now how do we keep this from happening again.

They have experienced the storm of a lifetime.  They know how it took them down.   What they realize now is profound.    They know now, after the storm, that there is nothing they can do to keep a storm from coming.  But there are things they can do to keep the storm from taking them down again.  They cannot stop the storm, but they can put ‘put on’ the things that will make them stand.

To replace blown out, broken doors, the people in Cabo have now installed hurricane proof doors, the right doors to stand up against hurricane force gusts.   The doors they had installed previously were not the right doors to stand up against hurricane force winds.

Home owners have replaced broken, shattered windows with new, hurricane proof windows because the windows they used to have were not strong enough to stand against Odile’s winds.  The old windows did not have adequate layers of protection against violent wind gusts.  They shattered into a thousand pieces when the wind came their way.  The new windows will not be shattered like the old windows.

There used to be signs in the elevators that shared the weather forecast for the next few days.  Visitors could read on those signs whether it would be partly cloudy or partly sunny, 91 degrees or 92.  Now, these signs with small pictures of the sun have been replaced with new signs.   The new signs don’t have cute little pictures on them.  The new signs have a bold title. You can’t miss it.  The new signs now read ‘What to do in the Event of a Hurricane.’  The priority is no longer whether to use sunblock or not each day.  Their new priority is being prepared when the next storm comes.  Signs that provided no defense against the storm in the past have been replaced with a tool for survival.

The people who weathered Hurricane Odile know now that storms do come and Odile won’t be the last.  There will be another storm.  This one took them down, but the next one will not.  The people in Cabo will stand through the next storm because they are now utilizing everything available to them to survive.

This year we are studying the Armor of God in Bible Study because we know in our lives, battles come.  Things we think will never come our way do come our way.  Battles rage in this world and we know we have an enemy who wants to take us down.  What used to seem strong enough, the ‘windows and doors’ we chose on our own, those we have previously installed to protect us from the weather, have proven useless in the past and we have seen the destruction left behind.  We may have felt defeated, exhausted, taken down in the past, but not anymore.  Not this year.

This year, we are putting on the full armor of God.   We are putting on everything God has made available to us in His Word to survive any battle, any storm that comes our way.  And not only will we survive, we will come out standing

We are going to see that it’s not about what we can do on our own to protect ourselves.  It’s about knowing and utilizing every available resource He has already given us and putting it on.

There’s always going to be another storm, another battle, but with this armor, like the people in Cabo, we are saying ‘Never again.’  When the next struggle comes, we are going to stand.

There are going to be some windows replaced, some doors reinforced, some signs taken down and new signs put up in their place.  This year, we are putting on the full armor of God.

With HIS armor in place, in the event of a hurricane, we are going to STAND.

Ephesians 6:11  Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.