I currently have the Weather Channel website open on a separate page, and some of the headlines are as follows; “I realized I was going to die”

“One little thing can go wrong, and that can be it.”

“Caution, check your groceries.”

“Horrific croc attack for golfer.”

“There is no antidote”.

I could literally go on like that for a while simply by scrolling down the page. As Ty Tabor says in one of his songs, “We learn how to be afraid.”

I have no time for this sort of thing. The fact is that we’re in God’s hands, and He takes care of us whether we know what the danger or the problem is. Take my exit from South Sudan as an example. My last night in Bor, South Sudan, the rain began at about nine at night, and continued on almost until morning. Rain blew in the sides of the semi-open building I was in, and I had to cover my hammock with a tarp. By morning, the roads were a special kind of slick like we simply don’t get in America. Dirt roads in America are graded and built up with gravel so they’re still passable in bad weather. In South Sudan, (and most of the world for that matter) dirt roads are just places where the trees have been cut down. When it rains, they turn to the kind of mud that’s hard to walk on, much less drive.

We prayed the entire way to the airport as the vehicle literally slid completely sideways and narrowly missed going into the black-hole-like ditch, where vehicles go in, but don’t come out again. We made it to the airport, and pastor Joseph didn’t say goodbye. We turned around and the vehicle was sliding back down the road. He was concerned about just making it back.

Our plane made it into the airport, and we made it out back to the capital, Juba, with our plane splashing through mud puddles on the runway as we left.

The weather cleared, and everything was ok, but we didn’t realize for a few days just how close our escape was. We left during the only break in the weather for the next couple of weeks. Shortly after we left, the rains came back, and the Nile flooded its banks for the second time this year. That two hour window was the only one we would get, and had we missed it, I might still be there.

My point in all this. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for today has enough trouble of its own. Who, by worrying, can add a single day to his life?”  The fact is that people were praying for us, and the troubles facing us were taken care of despite the fact that we didn’t fully understand the problem. 2nd Timothy says,  “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  So think about that the next time the weather channel tries to convince you that you might get ebola from pigeons in the park.