Well, I didn’t need a calendar to tell me what time of year it is.  All I needed was the thick insert in Sunday’s newspaper.

It is about to be….Hurricane Season.

Yes, every year, on the Sunday before June 1^st, we have “the insert”. The “STORM GUIDE 2011” insert.  Yes, the headlines are all in capital letters.  And yes, I feel like they are screaming at me. 

It is packed with full page ads for emergency generators, storm shutters and impact resistant windows.  There are evacuation routes and emergency shelter maps and lists of food items to stockpile.  There are dire warnings and statistics about how we are due for a major storm, and how few people take it seriously, how we have short memories and we’re complacent and lazy.

Once I get past the emotional trauma of being yelled at and chastised by a newspaper insert, I can read the very helpful and timely information about what I should be doing to prepare for a possible storm.

But am I just as prepared for life’s storms? When the darkness and the winds and the thunder and the lightning come battering into my life as they inevitably will, do I have a plan?  Do I know where I’ll go for protection and shelter and comfort and peace?  Do I have a stockpile of spiritual food?

God has given us the perfect Storm Guide.  And if I pick up my Bible and read it now, daily, instead of waiting until something dark is looming on the horizon, I’ll be in much better shape to face the storm.

It’s a whole lot better to be prepared.  And because I know the One who controls the storms and wrote the Storm Guide, I can be.

The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.  Psalm 37:31

When wisdom enters your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you.  Proverbs 2:10-11

For You have been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm.  Isaiah 25:4

But He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.  Matthew 8:26

Deliver me, O LORD, from my enemies; In You I take shelter.  Psalm 143:9

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me! For my soul trusts in You; and in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by.  Psalm 57:1

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  James 1:22