It was something that was so much a part of our lives in Colorado and Louisiana. But here in the Pacific Northwest, not so much.

I’m talking about thunderstorms. I don’t mean a casual peal of thunder or a slight rumble in the far-off distance, but a good, loud, window-rattling thunderstorm. The kind where you throw open the windows and put up with the cold temperature in exchange for the excitement of the storm.

But early last week, the “Great Storm” finally arrived. For the first time in three years, here it was! It was lovely. Our two daughters nobly suffered through the cold wind that rushed into the family room while we (my wife and I) relished in the moment.

However, I came to find out through the magic of Facebook within the hour, that not everyone statewide was rejoicing. Dear friends on the eastern side of the state posted just minutes later that they most likely lost a good portion of their cherries and blueberries. The very thing we reveled in brought destruction and sorrow to someone else.

Was that to say that somehow God was favoring us here on the western side of the state and cursing those on the eastern side? My theology, and I suppose perhaps yours, doesn’t allow for that. In fact, the Bible uses very similar imagery when it says that the lord allows rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

The scriptures are clear that there is a constant: it is God. The weather changes. How people treat you will vary. There never will be anyone or anything as much a constant as God.

And because of that sense of the constant, he himself is the one alone that can be trusted. If I were to invest my trust in something or someone that varies – that is here today and gone tomorrow – my hope would vary as much as the weather. I’d rather have the assurance of hope. I’d rather put my trust in one that says “I the lord do not change.”