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「忽然起了暴風雨。」（聖經馬可福音四章 37 節英文聖經直譯）
在信徒的生活中，有很多風雨都是突然之間興起的……憂患、失望、失敗、病痛等等；也有很多風雨是漸漸而來的，起初只有手掌那麼大的一點，後來漸漸給我們威脅。
雖然如此，這些風雨都是神所安排的，為要我們得益處。神願意有橡樹，祂就栽了一棵，祂讓它在風雨中飄搖……才能使它根深幹高，成為林中之王。
照樣，神願意造就一個可用之材，神就把他放在風雨之中，讓他經過風雨的生活。世上很多作大事業的偉人，都是經歷過艱難和痛苦的，神國度中的偉人，也是如此。如果神要用一個人，祂必定會先答應了這人奉獻的禱告：「主啊，拿我，劈我，用我。」
然而風雨一過，自然的美顯得更完全了。天空中飾著彩色的虹，草木的葉上鑲著閃光的水珠。照樣，風雨之後，信徒穿上聖潔的生活，臉上帶著屬天的光彩。
親愛的，你經歷過神所預備的風雨麼？你願意免去一時的痛苦，從風雨中逃出來呢？還是讓風雨抬你到更高、更豐盛的生命中去？ ── 選
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"And there arose a great storm." (Mark 4:37.)
Some of the storms of life come suddenly: a great sorrow, a bitter disappointment, a crushing defeat. Some come slowly. They appear upon the ragged edges of the horizon no larger than a man's hand, but, trouble that seems so insignificant spreads until it covers the sky and overwhelms us.
Yet it is in the storm that God equips us for service. When God wants an oak He plants it on the moor where the storms will shake it and the rains will beat down upon it, and it is in the midnight battle with elements that the oak wins its rugged fibre and becomes the king of the forest.
When God wants to make a man He puts him into some storm. The history of manhood is always rough and rugged. No man is made until he has been out into the sure of the storm and found the sublime fulfillment of the prayer: "O God, take me, break me, make me."
The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and the battle-scarred.
You have been in the storms and swept be the blasts. Have they left you broken, weary, beaten in the valley, or have they lifted you to the sunlit summits of a richer, deeper, more abiding manhood and womanhood? Have they left you with more sympathy with the storm-swept and the battle-scarred? -- Selected.
The wind that blows can never kill
The tree God plants;
It bloweth east, it bloweth west,
The tender leaves have little rest,
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree that God plants
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads greater boughs, for God's good will
Meets all its wants.
There is no storm hath power to blast
The tree God knows;
No thunderbolt, nor beating rain,
Nor lightning flash, nor hurricane;
When they are spent, it doth remain,
The tree God knows,
Through every tempest standeth fast,
And from its first day to its last
Still fairer grows.
--Selected.
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