Check the batteries in the flashlight.
Charge your phone.
Buy milk, and eggs, and bread.

We all have our own versions of these rituals preparing for severe weather. We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again.

But after the preparations, and before the storm, there is always a moment of quiet. A moment when we stand just beyond the limit of our own abilities, and just before the awesome power of creation. A moment where we step past our ability to control our lives and into the future that we cannot fully know.

These moments are good teachers. They remind us that we can never fully and solely depend on ourselves, but we need each other, and we need God.

Our tendency is to fill these anxious moments with a thousand tasks of diminishing returns. But I recommend another course:

Once the preparations have been made, sit still before the storm.