What Wrecks a Man

"In seasons of severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to, and is therefore compelled to cast himself on his God alone. When his vessel is on its beam-ends, and no human deliverance can avail, he must simply and entirely trust himself to the providence and care of God. Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God and God alone!"

A few weekends back felt like one of the worst weather related weekends of my life. Severe thunderstorms, falling branches, flooding, intense lightning and even a tornado were included in a palate of severity. Such awareness of these heightened by the fact that the weekend was to be spent in a tent rather than the confines of a. brick a mortar.

However, this was no ordinary weekend, this was a weekend  ripe with metaphorical and relative  significance. Struggling with he anticipation and meaning of what that was. It bore a heavier weight then perhaps my feet have carried, but it was too amorphous to come to sufficient understanding.

Two stark realizations occurred over those three days.

1. My own reconnaissance falls short of the things I near to be cognizant of.
2. When the thunder cracks loud enough, you have no choice but to hear.

"Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this!"

This is a perplexing word. The initial, albeit literal, interpretation of this would seem to be a contradiction in its very nature, that somehow the wreckage of a man would be something this aligns with happiness. But the truth of what CH is talking about is not the destruction of a man, rather the wrecking of a man. This is not about being destroyed, it's about being broken, and there is great contrast with those two things.

"The water would have overpowered us; the current would have overwhelmed us. The raging water would have overwhelmed us. The Lord deserves praise,for he did not hand us over as prey to their teeth. We escaped with our lives, like a bird from a
hunter’s snare."(Psalm 124:4-7 NET)

Spurgeon speaks only of the saving grace though the brokenness that comes with redemption. For without the current of the world, we would not know the power of sin's destruction, nor understand the completeness of our our salvation in his glory. He imagines us to imagine ourselves strengthened though his blood.

So when we encounter storms, the reality of the storms may not be a force of destruction, but rather a call out of destruction, a call to he brokenness hat we are obliged to him as a result of his great price.