Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Riding Out the Storm

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His advisers were amazed. “We don’t understand you,” they told him. “While the child was still living, you wept and refused to eat. But now that the child is dead, you have stopped your mourning and are eating again.”

David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the LORD will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:21–23)

David refused to give up. When suffering the backwash of sin, our tendency is to say, "I am through. I am finished with living. Life isn't worth it any longer." But look at what David did: he "comforted his wife Bathsheba." It's easy to forget that she was also grieving. Both of them went through a period of grief. They wept. And then they went on living.

David is once more walking with the Lord as he did in days past. One of the most pathetic scenes on earth is a child of God who sits in the corner too long, licking his wounds in self-pity. It takes as much (often more) spiritual strength and purpose to recover and move on as it does to go through a crisis. "I will go on, I will pick up the pieces, I will get back on target, I will go back to work, I will begin to enjoy my friends again, I will carry on as I did before. In fact, by God's grace, I will be wiser and even more effective than I was before."

David, in riding out the storm, gives us some beautiful guidelines. He prayed, he faced the consequences realistically, he turned it all over to the Lord as he claimed the scriptural truth concerning death, and then he refused to give up. He moved on, relying on his God for strength.

Riding out the storm is a lonely experience. You will never be more alone emotionally than when you are in the whirlwind of consequences. You will wish others could help you, but they can't. They will want to be there, they will care, but for the most part, you have to ride out the storm alone.

Riding out the storm, thank God, is also a temporary experience. It may be the most difficult time in your life. You will be enduring your own whirlwind. On the other hand, you may be the innocent bystander caught in the consequential backwash of another's sin. You'll feel desperately alone, and it may seem that it will never, ever end. But believe me, the whirlwind is a temporary experience. Your faithful, caring Lord will see you through it.